Healthy Eating & Living – A Must-Do for a good life

Instilling healthy eating habits is like taking new years’ resolution; easy to commit to yet hard to keep. Healthy diet is pretty personalized term that varies with needs/goals. Essentially everyone is aware of what nutrition best supports their bodily needs. Most people fall back on establishing healthy food intake as a routine. Here is why

• Change resistance and procrastination: An object in motion tends to stay in motion. We have routines that we follow like zombies. Yes zombies, because routines are mindless and effortless. Any change in routine is an additional effort to our mind and body. It needs great motivation to come out of these zombie routines. With recessing enthusiasm, thanks to human tendency to resist changes, we start procrastinating, eventually breaking our resolution.
• Non-tangent plans and unrealistic goals: Changes seldom happen overnight. It is not unusual that people initially overdo things in excitement and with time loose enthusiasm. Set short term goals for a greater objective.
• Breaking unhealthy habits: Deeply imbibed habits are tougher to break than creating a totally new one. To do this look into the self feeding habit loop. Find the cues triggering the habit. Realize and articulately modify the routine to achieve new rewards. Proactively catching the cues and avoiding them is another solution. This is true for our gustatory sensory habits that act as a hurdle in liking new tastes of food.
• Comparison and failing to listen to body: All different body types react differently. Understand that what worked for others might not work for you. Eating less salt is good for people with high BP but not for people with low BP. About a 100% of times our bodies tells us what’s working and what’s not. Design your diet plan accordingly.
• Importance of sustaining: Keeping health commitment is difficult. Mingle with like minded; it usually takes one more person to form a group. When alone, set up small tangible goals with motivating rewards.
• Undermining exercise: Term “Health” is a collaboration of nutrition and workout. By eating healthy you can control what you intake. It does not guarantee your body will benefit from it. Combine it with a workout to ensure every cell of your body get the nutrition due for it.
• Ever changing nutrition: Common mistake is to create a plan and never revisiting it. Nutritional needs not only change with time, age, health status, environment/era, quality of health products used but also with your progress on the plan. It is best to enhance strategies with your accomplishments and failures.

Mom says “The way we define food guidelines now a days, just puts undue stress to the naturally learned process. It takes away from other relevant things like acknowledging hunger cues, joy of eating together, using hands etc.”. Being mommy’s girl, I ask how more often than what. I resolute smart and sustain hard. Do you?