Similar to the way we conduct our Health and Wellness Assessments, we approach eating habits in the same manner. In this blog, we'll outline some of the ways you can approach eating better in 4 simple steps.
When it comes to eating, many people have developed good and bad habits. Some people always eat fruit as a dessert, and some people drink sugary drinks after work as a reward for getting through their productive day. Even if you’ve had the same eating pattern for years, it’s not too late to make changes.
Permanently improving your eating habits requires a thoughtful approach in which you assess, uncover, personalize, and remove.
Sudden and radical changes, such as eating nothing but cabbage soup, can lead to short term weight loss, but is this sustainable? Sudden and radical changes are generally neither healthy nor a sustainable way to be successful in the long run. Permanently improving your eating habits requires a thoughtful approach in which you'll assess, uncover, personalize and remove.
ASSESS
The first step to approaching and implementing a new eating habit is to assess your current eating habits. Do you eat when you need to, to replenish your fuel? Do you binge eat, and indulge in sugary treats because of boredom, stress, or social settings? Do you fog eat (mindless eating) between meals whether it's fuel eating or binge eating? And finally, do you storm eat (eating out of control), which always results in negative consequences, physically and emotionally?
These are some of the habits you'll need to assess before uncovering where your bad habits lie.
Uncover
After reflecting on all of your specific eating habits and what type of eater you are, you'll need to address your common triggers for eating the way you do.
Personalize
Once you've uncovered your triggers and responses to food, you can begin to personalize a plan that steers you in the opposite direction when you identify your triggers and responses to food. A few ways to do that is by simply creating a plan the way you would if you were approaching a new diet in this example below. The steps should cater to you and your lifestyle and should be enjoyable:
Step one:
Avoid the all-or-nothing approach. Cutting out everything you love will only set you up for failure
Step two:
Surround yourself with healthy foods. Having healthy foods on hand in times of stress, boredom, and in social settings allows you to indulge on foods that will actually do your body good when you are mindlessly eating.
Step three:
Keep less of your favorite treats on hand and eat them in moderation. Rewarding yourself with a sweet treat should not derail your healthy eating commitment. Disciplining yourself is key when enjoying your favorite treats when rewarding yourself. Just don't over do it - and eat them in moderation.
Step Four:
Think twice about crash dieting. When we screw up our commitments, we often seek our crash diets or strenuous workout plans that cause us to fail and revert back to our bad habits that we've been working to change. If you fail, simply start fresh the next day and address the triggers and responses that caused you to detail in the first place.
Remove
Once you've uncovered your triggers and responses to food, you can begin to remove unhealthy habits and replace them, not only with healthy eating habits, but with positive mental habits as well, such as affirmations and mediation. Stimulating the mind with positive thinking oftentimes floods out the negative noise that contribute to our physical triggers and stressors.
Bottom Line
Breaking old habits and forming new ones is not an easy process, especially when it comes to foods you’ve been eating for your whole life. Therefore, a variety of tools may be needed to navigate those factors and stick to a healthy diet long term.
Lean on professionals like us. We exist to help individuals address their wellness concerns by adapting the approach outlined in this blog. We offer a 30-minute consultation to review your symptoms and concerns, as well as habits that have contributed to the concerns you are feeling today. We'd like to hear from you!
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