One of the most harmful myths about switching to a healthier lifestyle is that everything has to be more difficult than it has to be.
True, it does take a great deal of effort, yet, living healthily doesn’t have to drain all the joy out of a good life. Flip your script and make change with an open mind, having as much fun as possible along the way.
Ditch Diet Culture
One of the most harmful and potentially toxic aspects of “healthy eating” is diet culture. Everything you eat is part of your diet. However, diet culture encourages short-term, drastic changes in your diet to lose weight rapidly.
This style of eating is unhealthy, to say the least. First, the emphasis is generally on weight loss, not eating healthily. While losing weight might be part of your health goals, there is a lot more to a healthy lifestyle than slimming down. An extreme focus on your weight can even lead to severe problems, such as eating disorders.
When you want to eat more healthily, the only way to succeed is to make lasting changes to your diet. This means that extreme changes like cutting out an entire food group need to be considered, ideally with the input of a medical professional. Otherwise, it’s easier to make smaller, but permanent changes for the better.
This prevents you from feeling as though you’re missing out on something you love with your diet. Avoid the pattern of switching between a restrictive diet and overindulgence.
Focusing on eating foods you love, but also loves you back is key. Pay attention, not only to your hunger and satiety but also how your food makes you feel.
Learn to Cook Better Food
The reason that restaurant food tastes so good is that it’s often a strategic ratio of fat, salt, and sugar. Processed packaged food is no different.
Cooking food yourself allows you to control exactly what goes into your body. Even better, you can make it taste fantastic as well. Healthy ready meals have the unfortunate tendency to either taste bland or to be secretly loaded with something less than healthy.
Using healthy fats like olive oil, avocado oil, and other fats that have other health benefits can be a great way to cook delicious, tasty food. Also, use spices and other flavorings to add another dimension to your cooking. For example, this skirt steak recipe involves marinating the steak in a delicious vinegary marinade for bags of flavor.