5 Secrets to Healthier Eating Habits
We all would like to improve the way we eat and usually start but fail to maintain it in time. Learn 5 hacks that will make you be able to make a sustainable change.
Eating is an instinct. It is what keeps living organisms alive. Sickness or health are factors that depend on our eating habits. And that is precisely why we need to make it a mindful task. It is important to understand that in the world we live in today, guiding us through our instinct won’t for everyone be a reliable source of healthy nourishment. Mostly because the supply of food available is pretty much infinite nowadays and the selection that we are offered is mostly not of high nourish quality.
How does anyone stop something that is in our nature? How do we gain control of survival instincts? It is for sure not an easy task. But it is also not an impossible one.
The secrets you need to know in pursuance of making sustainable change in your eating habits could be some of these:
1. Observe your Eating Habits
If you want to change something, you first have to realize what it is. In order to change your eating lifestyle, you should first see how it is working. There are even tools that can help you keep track of your eating habits. Following a food diary may be the simplest way, writing down the time and what you eat. Sometimes also the feelings you get when eating that specific food or later on during the day.
If you are a smartphone lover many apps can help you with this task, by only having to scan the barcode of the products you are consuming, they log in the nutritional information of the food, like the calories, macronutrients and also the time you scanned it. Two Applications I can suggest to you are FDDB and YAZIO. The necessary tools for food journaling are free and easy to use.
Keep track of your diet for at least two weeks, and try to collect as much accurate information as possible. Probably already making yourself aware of the food you are writing down will give you an idea of what you want or could improve.
2. Analyze your Patterns and Emotions
After having collected enough information about your eating habits take the time to go through them and analyze them, if you also keep an emotional journal, you can take it into consideration too, for the analysis. Sometimes actually the food we consume has an enormous influence on the way we feel during the day. And to be able to make a change that is sustainable in time you need to adapt your eating habits to your daily routine.
When you recognize patterns in yourself, you are converting those habits into conscious behavior. Awareness is much needed when trying to create change. So observe and be aware of what you do often, and when you do it, maybe you find repetitive behaviors or cycles. Being able to link factors of your nutrition to activities you do during the day may give you insights into how changing your eating habits can give you more comfort.
It will also give you an idea of what meals you could change and how you could change them. Realize at what times you eat the most, if you tend to consume many snacks instead of proper meals, it can give you a clue on how to maybe deal with your eating habits more healthily.
3. Set a REALISTIC Goal
With a goal, I don’t necessarily mean weight loss or muscle gain. I mean a goal to change your nutrition for your health. The outcome of that change may include weight loss but not necessarily. Better sleep, more energy, less anxiety and better hormonal levels can be outcomes of a change in eating habits, that sometimes are not given the importance we give to physical appearance, but that actually may improve our lives on higher levels. So don’t make your physical appearance a priority in the process of changing your eating habits immediately without understanding what you truly must master in order to receive those extra positive results.
Go step by step, if you would like to change your consumption of sugar, for example, do it gradually. Instead of drinking all your daily coffees with it, maybe allow yourself to only put sugar into one, or lower the doses in all of them. And gradually during the following days or weeks keep putting less sugar into your coffee, until you feel good enough to drink it without. For example, you can also allow yourself to do it only on certain days.
You must be realistic about it. Because if you go too hard on yourself you automatically will quit. If you set unrealistic goals, you are setting yourself up for failure and feelings of doubt about yourself.
4. Develop Awareness and Patience
Awareness is the key to successful change. I honestly think this applies to pretty much everything in our lives. So it can also apply to eating habits. You can not change what you can not see. So try reflecting on it as you do on other aspects of your life.
Changes don’t happen from sunset to sunrise, they take time and you are allowed to take time. Patience is key to seeing results. It is mandatory to be consecutive with the changes for them to work out.
5. Be Flexible and Stop Judging Yourself
Don’t be so harsh on yourself if you are not giving it 1000% every day. It is okay and sometimes it takes time to make a huge improvement. And in that time we need flexibility and less to no judgment. If we are compromised with the change we want to achieve, we know it is normal to not be able to give it all every day. So stay consistent and true to your goal, and remind yourself of it daily. But don’t beat yourself up for not getting through with it for a day. That makes you more prone to fail because you prefer to throw it all away just because you did one little misstep in a tremendous journey. You can’t succeed without little mistakes, it is part of the pathway.
There is a bunch of information about healthy eating, healthy foods, or diets on the internet. The amount of it can truly be extremely overwhelming when trying to improve your nutrition. Not only because there are too many different directions you can go, but also because nutrition is something that comes from an instinctive behavior and converting it into a task is not in our nature. It requires a lot of cognizant behavior. Because nowadays it is not only for survival that we eat but also for pleasure.
Understanding what lies behind nourishment is what may give us the key to making a change in our diets. Knowledge is key for awareness and change. So putting our mind into our eating habits and not just by changing some of the foods we consume but by analyzing and understanding how our body behaves is also important to practice healthier eating habits without them feeling like a lot of work.
