Eating healthy is good for you, no matter who you are or what your goals. You don’t have to be trying to lose weight to eat healthier, for one thing. But it can be tricky to know where to start, so here are your basic guidelines for healthy eating. Fruits, veggies, and protein are some of the easiest places to start, and they’ll have the biggest impacts.

There’s no perfect diet

Before we start, an important ground rule: There isn’t one true perfect way to eat. No matter what your keto friend says, or your mom who has this diet plan you just have to try, or even those ranked lists of the “best” diets. When weight-loss diets have been tested against each other, they all work about the same. And if you’re just eating healthy for, you know, your health (what an idea!) there are still plenty of ways to do it. So let’s talk about the things that nearly all healthy eating approaches have in common.

Even though I’ll list several good starting points below, you don’t have to do all of them—pick one for now. Just as with exercise, it takes time to get used to a habit. Eating healthier may involve many different habits, like learning new recipes or buying different groceries than what you’re used to, so give yourself some time to learn and get used to it.

Eat more fruits and vegetables

If you only change one thing, make it this. Most of us don’t eat enough vegetables, or we eat the same few over and over. Eat more vegetables, and more types of vegetables. Same with fruits, especially fresh fruits. (Apple pie is technically a fruit, but that’s not quite what I mean.) Fruits and vegetables contain fiber, which most of us don’t get enough of, including soluble, insoluble, and prebiotic types. They also contain vitamins and minerals that most of us could use more of, like vitamin A and potassium. And they contain plenty of phytonutrients, which are natural chemical compounds that don’t qualify as vitamins but that are still likely good for us. For example, beta-carotene is a form of vitamin A, but there are at least 40 other carotenes that we can get in our diets. Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, and you’ll cover a lot of bases.

How to do it: Try to add a fruit or vegetable to at least one meal a day. (When you’ve got the hang of that, build on that and add another.) Feel free to make this convenient: frozen veggies are just as nutritious as fresh (sometimes more so). You can throw frozen cooked spinach into just about any sauce or soup, or roast a bunch of veggies—fresh, frozen, whatever—on a sheet pan for an easy side dish or meal. Everything tastes good seasoned and roasted.

Get enough protein

It’s not hard to get enough protein on a normal diet, but as you’re overhauling what you eat, make sure that you’re making room for it. Lean proteins like fish, chicken and tofu are an excellent base for your diet. Whether to include fattier ones like red meat depends on your goals for your diet (including whether your doctor has advised you to limit these foods for health reasons).

If you’re trying to lose weight, you need more protein than the average person. The less food you eat, the more of it needs to be protein. Remember, protein is a nutrient found in many foods; it’s not just the meats and tofu themselves. Get used to reading labels (or googling the protein content of your foods) to make sure you get plenty. The numbers are in our protein guide. If you work out a lot, you’ll also need more protein than the average person.

And don’t worry about the fearmongering messages you may have heard about how we already get “too much” protein. This is a myth, borne out of some misunderstandings about how the RDA for protein is calculated. When you check the numbers, it turns out that the average person eats just barely enough protein, and many of us are in groups that should get more than the minimum. If you’re an older adult, for example, you probably need significantly more than you’re already getting.

Have less sugar and processed food

It’s not realistic to cut sugar and processed foods completely out of your diet. Processing is relative, anyway; cooking is a form of processing. But if you find yourself eating a lot of these foods, it can be helpful to ask yourself: What could I be eating instead?

In place of a boxed breakfast cereal, for example, you could make your own oatmeal or overnight oats. If you drink a lot of soda, maybe you’d be fine with swapping out some of those drinks for water or seltzer. And if you snack a lot on candy or chips, maybe you could make your meals a bit larger (more protein? More veggies?) so you’re less likely to get a snacky craving later in the day.

Make it easy to eat healthy

Intending to eat healthy is the easy part. It’s actually grabbing the right meal or snack when you’re busy or exhausted that trips people up. So think ahead about what you want to eat, and set things up to make it easy.

Put fresh fruit in a convenient spot, and shove the candy into the back of a cabinet. Chop some veggies on the weekend and cook some brown rice so they’re ready to throw together when it’s time for a meal. If you like cooking dinner but tend to be lost at lunchtime, go ahead and pack yourself a lunch in the evening (even if you work at home) so that you’ll just have to open your lunchbox when it’s time to eat.

Eating healthy doesn’t have to mean cooking from scratch, by the way. I love getting bags of frozen veggies or veggie/grain mixes from Trader Joe’s and pairing them with whatever protein I have on hand (often also bought and defrosted from Trader Joe’s, sorry, I’m predictable). It’s not cheating to make things easy on yourself. If you think that preparing your meals ahead of time might help, check out my guide to getting into the meal prep habit without getting overwhelmed with the cooking or bored with the meals.

Only track calories if you really want or need to

If you’re trying to gain or lose weight, what needs to happen is that your total calorie intake will need to change relative to the number of calories you burn. And if your weight has been changing but you don’t want it to, you’ll need your calorie intake and calorie burn to be equal. Tracking your food and counting calories can help you keep tabs on whether the numbers are going the way you want them to.

That said, don’t track calories just because you feel like you “should.” If you don’t have a specific goal, or if you’re flexible about the timeline, you don’t have to download MyFitnessPal just because that’s what all your dieting friends are doing. (Cronometer is the better app for meal tracking anyway, and you can get a better handle on your weight gain or loss with Macrofactor (paid) or a free DIY solution.)

If you do end up counting calories, a word of warning: don’t aim for a shockingly low number, even if you have the willpower to make it work. (1200 calories is starvation rations.) Extreme calorie deficits can make you lose muscle, not just fat, which may leave you, ironically, less fit than when you started. Gradual changes are more sustainable anyway.

There are a few tricks with home bread baking that make the difference between a lackluster loaf and a spectacular one. One of them is having a heavy duty baking surface to get a nice bottom crust, and another is creating a steamy environment for a lofty loaf. Managing these requirements might sound like a challenge, or like expensive equipment might be involved, but you can actually solve both needs with a common piece of cookware: the Dutch oven. 

Why you should bake bread in a Dutch oven

A heavy duty baking surface, like a baking stone, is easy enough to come by, but a steam injected oven like the bakeries have is not as common at home. Steam is essential for a fully risen loaf of bread that cracks open exactly where you score it. The moist air allows for oven spring and it’s the last time your bread rises after all that proofing. Without moisture, the bread will immediately develop a dry skin that impedes the oven spring. This can stunt your loaf and also cause it to tear open at an unintended seam as the inside of the bread starts rising a few minutes later. Moist air in the first five to 10 minutes of baking ensures the crust doesn’t develop too early and the dough can expand as much as possible. 

There’s the ol’ pan of water trick, where you add water to a hot pan in the oven in hopes that it’ll steam things up while your bread bakes, but I find that this isn’t always enough because the oven is such a large space and the steam vents out quickly. If only you had a small, enclosed space made from a heavy duty material to capture the bread’s natural moisture and evenly distribute the heat. Oh. Right.

The Dutch oven is like a baking stone and a steam keeper all rolled into one. (And if you don’t have one yet, here are some affordable options.) The Dutch oven makes a huge difference in the rise my sourdough gets compared to the baking stone and water pan method.

How to make bread in a Dutch oven 

You can make any yeast-raised bread in a Dutch oven (and a ton of other stuff too), just make sure the loaf isn’t too big for the pot that you have. A round loaf of bread that’s fully proofed and ready to bake should have an inch of clearance all the way around and a few inches above. A lot of rise is what we’re counting on, so you don’t want the space to be cramped. 

When your bread dough has already done the bulk proof, and it’s been shaped, place it on a large piece of parchment paper for its second proof. Then get to setting up your oven.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

My dutch oven is rather tall so I put the rack down to the second-to-bottom position so I have enough space. About 30 minutes before your bread is finished proofing, put a lid on your Dutch oven and put it in the oven to preheat. Set the oven to whatever temperature you need. I’ll set mine to 450°F for the sourdough. Keep in mind that most Dutch ovens are oven safe up to 500°F or higher, but sometimes the handle on the lid isn’t. Check your brand to make sure. If your lid isn’t oven safe, use a baking sheet to cover the top. It’s not perfect but it’ll do.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Once the bread is ready to be baked, score the bread how you’d like. I’m partial to the square score. Carefully take the Dutch oven out of the oven with mitts on. Remove the lid. Lift the bread up by the parchment paper corners and lower it into the pot. Put the lid on (if you’re using a baking sheet “lid,” put it on once the pot is in the oven) and put the entire Dutch oven back into the conventional oven. Bake it for as long as your recipe indicates, but with 10 minutes left in the baking time, remove the lid so the bread can brown. Take the bread out of the pot carefully to cool on a wire rack.

My Dutch oven sourdough recipe

This recipe uses a sourdough starter for flavor and the leavening, of course. However, if you’re not in the business of keeping starter around (and if you want to but it keeps failing, read this) then you can just stir one teaspoon of active dry yeast into the water measurement before adding the flour and salt. 

Ingredients:

• 7 ounces room temperature water

• 4 ounces sourdough starter

• 10 ounces high-gluten flour

• 0.25 ounces salt

1. Mix the water, starter, and flour together in the bowl of a stand mixer. I use the dough hook and stir things around until the dry bits have been moistened and the dough looks shaggy. Let this rest for 15 minutes. This short autolyse will help hydrate the flour and strengthen the gluten. 

2. Set the dough hook and bowl onto the machine and start it on the first speed. Sprinkle in the salt as it’s stirring. Put the machine onto the second speed for three minutes, and the third speed for another three minutes. The dough may stick a bit to the bottom at first and that’s alright—it’ll gather up by the end.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

3. Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover it with plastic wrap, a plastic bag, or a hotel shower cap. Place this bowl in a warm area, or my favorite mug warmer proofing rig. Every 45 minutes, fold the dough in half and flip it over. This is especially helpful for sourdough, but if you’ve used active dry yeast you can leave it be.

4. Once the dough has doubled in size, usually two to three hours depending on how active your yeast is, dump it out onto a lightly floured surface. Fold the dough in half to knock out the air. Shape the dough into a square and lift the edges together to make a purse. Dust away the flour and flip the purse over. Use your hands to tighten the dough’s skin and shape a ball. Here’s my video on dough shaping. (It’s very helpful, according to me.)

5. Set the loaf onto a large piece of parchment paper and cover it with a tea towel and drape over that same piece of plastic you used before. Let this proof for about 45 minutes, or until a fingerprint springs back halfway.

6. Heat the Dutch oven in the conventional oven during this proofing time. When the bread is ready to bake, score the bread with a sharp serrated knife or a lame. Take out the pot, grab the corners of the parchment paper and lower the loaf into the pot. Cover the Dutch oven and put it into the oven to bake for 15 minutes. Remove the lid and leave the bread in the oven to finish baking for another 10 minutes. Cool the finished loaf on a wire cooling rack.