The foods that you can eat during the undereating phase are different from those foods that you can consume during the nightly overeating phase, although the guidelines for both phases follow similar rules. Here are some general guidelines to follow on the Warrior Diet so you know what to eat in your evening meal.
Choose fresh, natural, and wholesome foods. These foods, particularly raw vegetables, are typically subtle in taste, meaning they won't overpower your taste buds with processed sugar, refined fats, salt, or artificial flavorings. In this sense, the Paleo Diet is a perfect complement to the Warrior Diet method of fasting.
Although you won’t just be eating raw veggies on the Warrior Diet, you should start there. Focus on eating subtle-tasting foods and then move onto protein, then cooked vegetables, and finally round out your meal with either carbohydrate-rich foods, such as fruits and sweet potatoes, or the occasional dessert or fat-rich foods, such as nuts, nut butters, or high-fat desserts.
Make the food you eat as colorful as possible (for example, green salad, yellow bell peppers, kalamata olives, red onions, and such). You can highlight various textures by starting with a light broth-based soup, enjoying a steak and crispy veggies as your main meal, and then ending with some honey-sweetened chia seed pudding for dessert. Experiment with unfamiliar in-season fruits and vegetables.
Start with subtle-tasting foods. In the Standard American Diet (SAD) of today, subtle-tasting foods are unfortunately uncommon. If you go to any restaurant, the first thing you'll see set in front of you is a basket of bread rolls made from heavily processed flour or tortilla chips fried in vegetable oil.
However, the best and healthiest choices include a large green salad topped with tomatoes, onions, carrots, bell peppers, and a simple olive oil and vinegar dressing.
Choose between a meal of protein paired with carbohydrate-rich foods or a meal of protein and fat-rich foods. Selecting one of these two options maximizes your body's ability to absorb nutrients, burn calories, and keep everything running smoothly.
If you go with the first option, pick a lean protein with carbohydrates, such as sweet potatoes. You can also go with a meal of protein and fat-rich foods, such as nuts and seeds. Try to alternate those carb-heavy and fat-heavy meals.
One method to help you not only opt for the best food choices but to also keep you interested and excited in the food you're eating is to include as many different flavors, textures, colors, and aromas as you can within your nightly meal.
Watch out for store-bought dressings. If you prepare your own foods, then you're in direct control as to what actually goes into the food you eat. It takes as little time to drizzle extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar on a salad as it does to pour ready-made dressings on it.
Beware of those store-bought dressings. Even if they seem innocuous enough (such as a bottle of balsamic vinaigrette), those products can have loads of extraneous ingredients, from preservatives to sugar. Play it safe — and healthy — and make your own.
Otherwise you have few restrictions. You can eat as much as you want during your one nightly meal. Although this concept of healthful overeating may feel foreign or guilt-inducing, you'll find that the longer you practice the Warrior Diet, the more attuned to your body you'll become, meaning you'll instinctively know when to stop eating and what it feels like to be truly full and satisfied.
Play, invent, and use your imagination. Meal preparation is an inherently creative process. There's no reason or excuse to get bored preparing and eating healthy foods.
Just because you've successfully completed a fast or a string of fasting days, whether or not you are adhering to the Warrior Diet, don't celebrate by derailing your nutrition. The Warrior Diet helps detoxify your body so don't fall into the trap of putting toxins back in with sweet treats, refined sugar, and processed grains.