Eat Better Feel Better Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Eat Better, Feel Better is a go-to guide for combating modern dietary problems and adopting a healthier lifestyle.

Read in: 4 minutes

Favorite quote from the author:

Food has the power to influence our entire life. It can fuel happiness and most importantly, our health. Therefore, our relationship with it is not something we should neglect, and yet, people do that every day. As our society evolved, so did our eating habits. Although evolution is generally a good thing, when it comes to what we eat, we should keep it as simple as possible. 

Giada De Laurentiis points out several aspects of our daily eating habits that are far from simple, detrimental to our health and our disposition. Modern diets and lose-weight-fast formulas are taking over consumers. They are causing digestive issues and chronic inflammation. For this reason, changing the way we eat is imperative.

Adopting a super-clean diet, changing your lifestyle, and becoming a healthier version of yourself is not easy, but it is definitely achievable using Eat Better, Feel Better. 

Here are three of my favorite lessons from this book:

1. Prioritize gut-supporting foods in your diet.
2. When you don’t have time, use improv recipes to prepare your meals.
3. Consider exercising and dietary supplements as highly important aspects of your lifestyle.

Lesson 1: When planning your meals, gut-supporting foods are the most important.

What are gut-supporting foods? They are nutritionally dense foods, free of toxins, and they don’t pose a threat to your immune system. When opting for these types of edibles, look for the least processed ones, as they have the highest nutritional value. 

A typical meal in your day may look like a large portion of vegetables with a small portion of lean protein, such as chicken, lamb, or turkey. Make sure to pick animal products that are grass-fed, free of antibiotics or hormones whenever possible. 

There are a few rules to keep in mind when building the perfect plate. At least twice a day, center your meals around leafy greens, whole grains, and vegetables. Try to limit carb-based meals, like pancakes or pasta, to once per day. 

The same goes for animal proteins too. Desserts and alcohol should be limited to twice per week. When it comes to dairy, try to consume just half a cup daily. Lastly, try to have a few vegetarian days per week.

Lesson 2: Improv recipes are easy and convenient if you precook components.

Cooking at home has its pros and cons. We all like to add as much sauce to our pasta as we want to, yet we loathe washing the dishes after. For most of us, the time and energy required to cook at home outweigh the benefits, so we opt for takeaway. 

The problem is, we don’t know the quality of ingredients that go into our food. And if we want to eat clean, we can’t consistently order food. Giada suggests that we precook some of the main ingredients for our meals at the beginning of the week. 

What do risottos, soups, or some types of pasta have in common? Chicken. So if you plan on eating those throughout your week, you can try precooking larger quantities of poultry in advance. It’ll definitely shorten your time in the kitchen!

There are a bunch of meals that you can improvise from leftovers or precooked ingredients. Most of the time, you can make a salad, a grain bowl, or a combination of vegetables and meat in under five minutes, if you already have the components on hand.

Lesson 3: There’s more to a healthy lifestyle than nutrition, and that is sports and supplements.

Now that you know the basics of a clean diet, it’s time to talk about other aspects of a healthy lifestyle. It’s no secret that regular exercise enhances the quality of life and that food supplements can give our system a boost when we have a vitamin deficiency.

Finding out what types of exercise work best for you may take some time. It can be gym, running or playing sports. Giada confesses that she is a big fan of yoga, but she wasn’t always like that. Just like you, she found out what suits her the best. 

More often than not, our bodies require vitamins and supplements, as our eating habits differ a lot from our ancestors. In contrast to them, we almost never eat entire parts of an animal or plant, so we miss out on numerous nutrients.

The book suggests you should always check with your doctor what are your deficiencies and what vitamins or immune boosters you could use. Check your health regularly and talk with your nutritionist about what supplements might benefit you.

Eat Better, Feel Better Review

Giada de Laurentiis offers her readers an overview of the most common dietary problems and a proven way to combat them. Her path to wellness inspires people to take a deep look at their eating habits and acknowledge their problems. 

Her go-to diets and lifestyle routines will heal anyone willing to stick to them and enrich their lives. This book is the right guide to selecting foods that make you feel great, adopting a healthy routine, and cleaning your body from inflammatory toxins.

Who would I recommend our Eat Better, Feel Better summary to?

The 30-year old person that is tired all the time and wants to change their eating habits, the person that feels stuck in a rut and wants to turn their life around, or the health-conscious foodie who wants to learn about the right approach to a better lifestyle.

Last Updated on May 25, 2023