Steps To Change Your Eating Habits
When a new year begins, or for example, after a birthday, it’s common for us to set goals such as, ‘losing extra pounds‘. We believe that the only way to achieve this is by starting a restrictive diet, and that makes us choose it as a supposed remedy. This type of diet can make us suffer during the process and it isn’t always the best steps to take when you want to change your eating habits.
Change your eating habits instead of following a fad diet
If you choose to change your eating habits instead of following a fad diet, the results will start to show, without much effort. And what’s more, these results will last for a very long time. It’s obvious, that the typical restrictive type diets are more likely to have a rebound effect; as soon as we eat something that we’re not supposed to eat, we gain back all the lost weight.
The issue is that nowadays, we want fast and immediate results; just like the fast food that we order. But the results from fad diets are transitory and fake. Yes, it’s true that they make us thinner… But at what cost? What should we give up just to be skinnier for a little while? Our health is often the most affected by this too.
Tips to change your eating habits
Maybe you want to lose weight, or you want to heal a digestive, intestinal or hepatic disease? By changing your eating habits you’ll be able to see how your whole body starts to function better. You won’t only lose weight or stop experiencing stomach aches, you’ll also feel more energetic, decrease your chances of getting sick, and your skin will look great too.
Create new and healthy habits
Restrictive diets, as their name implies, reduce the amount, or types of ‘allowed’ foods that we can consume. Having healthy habits means that you can eat whatever you want, as long as the portions are moderate.
Fighting against years and years of harmful habits such as junk food or alcohol isn’t always easy. It’s not something that you can change (nor is it advisable to do so) overnight.
The best thing you can do to change your eating habits is to add new ones. For example, drink fruit smoothies at breakfast, change white bread for whole bread, drink a smaller cup of coffee than you’d usually drink, dine earlier, etc.
Make gradual changes
This isn’t a competition or a speed test. The changes that you’ll make will be slow, calm and not at all drastic. If you stop drinking coffee overnight, you’ll suffer from abstinence, as caffeine made your brain feel good.
Very abrupt changes aren’t useful to achieve long-term results. You’ll have a miserable time and you’ll quit the diet before you even properly begin. We can compare changing your eating habits to a marathon: it requires a lot of resistance and slow progress. The total opposite to 100 meter explosive races!
You don’t have to be miserable
One of the main problems with dieting is that it doesn’t allow us to enjoy the process. We’re required to stop eating things that cause of obesity, cholesterol or stomach aches. And when we’re not enjoying something, we look for a thousand excuses to give up.
Changing means finding those alternatives that make us feel comfortable. Don’t be craving fries and then settle for a salad. You can eat a smaller portion of fries and supplement them with a healthy menu.
Do not feel like you have no choice
The best time to change your nutritional habits is before you become overweight or start to suffer with hypertension. Why? Well, because then you won’t feel it’s an obligation. Many people go on diets after they go to the doctor and results from their tests aren’t that great. But then they give up at the very first chance!
To change your habits, you must be convinced that it’ll be good for your health. Educate yourself, search for information, ask people who eat healthily… and you’ll soon start to implement several healthy habits to your lifestyle without any difficulty.