Two easy rules I've settled on for diet, mostly revolving around GI: 1. Regularly add vinegar(any kind) to most meals, or drink it diluted in water. This drama

Two easy rules I've settled on for diet, mostly revolving around GI: 1. Regularly add vinegar(any kind) to most meals, or drink it diluted in water. This dramatically lowers effective GI of carbs so overconsumption is more difficult. It also has some (complex, but mostly positive) effects on body acidity and digestion. Vinegar has been documented for its properties since ancient Greek times, so it's one of the most proven aids around. 2. The _context_ in which things are consumed matters more than the _amount_. For this I mostly stick to a single rule: Meals should be either "carb meals" or "saturated fat" meals. Preferably neither, but never both. Saturated fat acts to raise effective GI and this is the main source of the "badness" in meals like pizza, "super" burritos, burger+fries, macaroni+cheese, etc. But sausage and sauerkraut, or cheese in a green salad are relatively low-impact combinations, despite having a nominally high level of sat-fat. Similarly, even drinking a can of Coke(massive sugar-carb dose, the worst kind) can be OK once in a while, but if you have Coke with lard-soaked fries or full-fat ice cream you're signing up for the sick train. There are tons of other contextual rules you can stack on for caffeine, gluten, the best types of fats, the best preparation methods, etc. but the sat-fat/carb one is the biggest bang-for-buck one I've found, and combining that with vinegar to mitigate the worst-case situations I can remain pretty flexible about what I'm eating.