These tips could help you get on the road to healthier eating habits.
Remember: Dietary changes should be made gradually and steadily to ensure that your new eating habits become permanent ones.
List Your Change Triggers
What are your personal reasons for wanting to change your eating habits? Often it is useful to write down a list of reasons as to why you want to change your eating habits and keep this somewhere handy to refer to.
Visualise Your New Life
Visualise yourself living life in the future. What will you do? Where will you go? Hold onto these images to help you stay focused, especially if things get tough.
Replace Extreme with Healthy
Choose a Healthier Balance. If you severely restrict your food for long periods of time you could suffer from both psychological and physical complications.
Selecting food from all the major food groups in the right proportion. Eating is not only one of life's great pleasures but it also ensures that we get all the nutrients to help the body work properly and remain healthy. No single food contains them all in the amounts needed, so a mixture of foods has to be eaten. This can be achieved by choosing foods from all the major food groups, in the right proportions.
Establish a Regular and Realistic Eating Pattern
Fit your eating plan into your lifestyle, rather than the other way round and always eat regular meals and snacks throughout the day, at roughly the same times each day.
Keep a Food Diary
Keeping a food diary as this will help you keep focused. Regularly review your food diaries with your dietary plan to see if you are on the right track.
Learn to Think Positively About Food
Eating healthily is all about balance. The eventual aim is that you will be able to get back to a healthy pattern of eating. This usually means 3 meals/ snacks a day at regular times, which will keep your weight steady. You and your body need to relearn how to do this and these tips along with your eating plan will help you do it. In due course you will feel comfortable with a normal pattern of eating and natural feelings of hunger/ fullness.
And finally, try to be kind to your body, don’t punish it.
Lynne Garton, BSc (Hons), RD
Lynne is a qualified Nutritionist and Dietitian who has over 20 years experience in food, diet and health. After qualifying from King's College, London with a degree in Nutrition and a Postgraduate Diploma in Dietetics, Lynne practised as a clinical Dietitian in the NHS.
Lynne is a member of the British Dietetic Association, Health Professions Council, Nutrition Society and American Dietetic Association.
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