By Brian Cannone
It isn’t hard to eat healthy just adjust to eating foods you enjoy and sometimes your eating habits change. It’s like switching from light and sweet coffee and now drinking black coffee.
When you are trying to keep your health and fitness regimen at its highest, you need to recognize that it is all about healthy eating. A common misconception about weight loss is that it can be hard to eat healthy. It is NOT hard to eat healthy. You simply need to learn to adjust to eating foods you will enjoy. If you sit and think about your favorite dishes to eat, you also need to think that there is always a healthier alternative. For instance you could love to drink light and sweet coffee, but with a healthy adjustment you could learn to love black coffee. It all comes down to training your body to enjoy different foods. It is up to you to learn to try new, and healthy, food alternatives. You have to understand and notice that your eating habits are not permanent; they can always be altered. What you used to eat as an adolescent most of which you probably do not care for anymore. The same goes for the foods you eat as an adult. Eating habits can change and you have to understand the different ways to help change them.
The first step in learning how to eat healthy is to identify the foods that you consume that are unhealthy. You need to think about all of your eating habits. It is not about figuring out 2-5 foods that you eat that are not good for you, it is about finding them ALL. A lot of the foods that you are ingesting might not be as good for you as you originally anticipated. The key is to learning how to identify these foods. The first thing you need to do is to look at the ingredients label on the foods you are purchasing. How much sugar is in it? How many carbs are included? How much fat? The sooner you understand the main questions you should be asking of yourself and of your foods, the sooner you can begin to eat healthy. Another way to help eliminate the unhealthy foods you consume is to realize when you are “sneaking” unhealthy snacks. When you grab a handful of popcorn at the movies, you are doing more damage than you realize. You need to identify ALL of the unhealthy foods in your daily diet.
Once you have identified and eliminated the unhealthy foods in your diet, you then need to replace them with healthy alternatives. If you are eating toast and butter with your breakfast you should replace that with oatmeal. The key is to find healthy foods to replace what you have taken out of your diet. If you eliminate a breakfast food or all of your meal for breakfast, you need to find a healthy alternative to replace it. In order to even begin to accomplish this, you need to understand just what is considered a healthy replacement. Pay attention to the label! This is most likely the most important factor in eating the proper foods. You have to be aware of the ingredients that are contained in the foods you are consuming. Be sure to keep in mind that the more ingredients an item of food contains the less healthy it is for you.
It might seem like changing your eating habits will be hard, but in fact it is quite the contrary. Good eating habits are just like your metabolism; it isn’t something you are or aren’t born with, you are born with it and you can change it. You can either slow or speed up your metabolism. The same goes for your eating habits. You can have good or bad eating habits it all depends on your will and drive. If you are not motivated and aren’t willing to do what it takes to lose weight and maintain your health regimen, you will not be able to change your eating habits. The trick to changing your eating habits is to find a healthy alternative that you will enjoy. When you replace the unhealthy foods with healthy ones you more than likely will be tempted to cheat. A fool proof way to help curb the temptation you will encounter from eliminating unhealthy foods is to develop a taste for the healthy foods. When you replace unhealthy foods with healthy ones, you need to pick a good alternative. Despite what you may believe, there is such a thing as great tasting healthy foods. What is the best way to find great tasting healthy food? Trial and error! You don’t know what is really good and tasty until you try it.
Changing your eating habits is just as easy as changing any other habits in your life. What is a good thing to help remember just how easy it can be for you to change your habits? 30! Any bad habit or bad eating habits you have can be changed in 30 days! How is that possible? If you change your habit and can maintain it for 30 days straight you will find that you have broken yourself of your previous habit. For example, when you give up an unhealthy food (i.e. McDonald’s) and replace it with a good healthy alternative and you maintain it for 30 days you might just come to find that when you try to eat McDonald’s again you will not find it nearly as satisfying. That is the benefit of giving up your bad eating habits for good ones; you will find healthy foods much more satisfying and you will lose your taste for the unhealthy foods. Be sure to keep in mind that changing your eating habits is easy! It all depends on just how hard you are willing to work, and if you have the dedication to your overall goal, in order to maintain your new eating habits!
