Nutrition Basics: Quality Calories vs Empty Calories

Good nutrition helps your body function and blunts the effect of stress, and most of it reduces to a single habit: choose quality calories over empty calories.

This is the short version we hand out in the office, published in full below. There is nothing to download and no email required.

Quality calories, not empty ones

Nutrition advice gets complicated for no good reason. In practice it comes down to one choice, made repeatedly: quality calories over empty calories. Build meals from the first list, reduce the second.

Build meals from these

• Organic where it is practical
• Plant-based as much as possible
• Dark and colorful vegetables
• Live foods
• Beans, lentils, chickpeas, edamame
• Quinoa, buckwheat, soba noodles
• Oats and whole grains, brown rice
• Nuts, nut butter, seeds, spirulina
• Tofu and lean meats

Cut back on these

• Processed foods
• Canned foods
• White sugar
• White flour and white pasta
• White rice
• Soda

Supplements are a separate conversation and depend entirely on you, so we handle those in person rather than publishing a schedule for strangers. Nothing here replaces advice from your physician or dietitian.

Who it is for

Anyone wanting the short version without a 40-page book.