New Year...New Food Habits

Your journal has revealed a lot about your fitness, emotional, and nutritional life. It is so easy at the beginning of a new year to get caught up the latest fad diet, detox program, or other diet craze. Fad diets often leave out important elements of our daily nutritional needs. They are drastic! Drastic changes in our diets can cause drastic reactions in our health. Yes, you may lose weight, but this weight loss may not be sustainable as the diet chosen is usually not befitting most lifestyles. Also, many diet fads are too restrictive and disregard the body's need for proper nutrition. Instead of dieting, we suggest that you "EDIT" your nutrition. To do this we have two primary suggestions: 1) think about food as fuel and 2)simply your food plans

Food as fuel

Bite by bite, we load calories into our bodies, but we give little to no thought as to what they truly do for our bodies. This year, let's really look at food, in a fresh way.  Instead of looking at food as the enemy, let's look at it as it was designed…as fuel. 

Food provides our bodies with nutrients to keep our systems going, our organs and matter healthy, and gives us energy to handle the rest of our lives. Look at the nutritional table of your foods. Get to know what's in them. Start thinking about how carbohydrates gives you energy and protein builds muscle. By focusing on the science, we can begin to break the emotional attachments to foods.  We will discuss this method more in months to come.

Simplify your diet plans

Sticking to "diet plans" is a difficult thing, mainly because it is a chore to stay in such restrictive guidelines. Instead of adhering to some plan from someone. Think about healthy options and plan accordingly. In your journal, you have recorded your normal food choices. You can start adjusting these choices little by little. Instead of a major overhaul, start small. Try starting with a 60-40, 75-25, or if you are already advanced, a 90-10 plan. You eat a well-balanced, nutritional meal majority of the time, trying to stay as perfect as possible. However, leave yourself a percent for the cravings and junk foods. These plans help us not feel bad about not being perfect. They also allow us to easily recover when we've strayed from our better food choices.

With these methods, you can start editing your nutrition to create a sustainable method that is good for you. You customize it to fit your needs and lifestyle. As with writing a paper, song, poem, or whatever, you will need a few edits before it is just right. And as always, there will be room for improvement, but you will reach a point of acceptability.

Edit your nutrition…your life just may depend on it.