You know those people who manage to exercise every day without fail, eat hearty salads for lunch and refrain from indulging in daily 3pm Kit Kats?
They are annoying and I hate them.
But as bad as they make us battlers feel, there’s a lot to learn about dedication from these kinds of people.
Really, the only difference between us and them is a little mental nugget called habit.
Choosing to go down the healthy route (and I say choosing, because it is a choice that everyone is capable of) is all about habit, and here are 13 of them you should have a crack at today. You might only pick one at a time, and that’s perfect; maintaining or losing weight, and striving to be healthier, is a step-by-step process.
1. Eat breakfast
“It’s too hard to prepare before work.”
“I’m not hungry that early in the morning.”
“I can wait it out till lunch and I’d rather have a big meal then.”
No matter what the excuse, skipping breakfast is not a good idea. While there’s no use in eating when you’re not physically hungry, getting your eating routines in order to include breakfast is a good idea for the following reasons:
– Eating breakfast boosts energy levels and your metabolism.
– Breakfast breaks the overnight fasting period replenishing your supply of glucose.
– Without it, you’re more likely to become irritable, restless, and tired earlier in the day.
If you feel like you don’t have time to prepare yourself a big, nourishing meal in the morning, prep the night before. Overnight oats are a stellar example of a filling and delicious meal that takes less than 5 minutes to prepare. This recipe is a goodun to start you off.
2. Make at least 1 meal a day a big, fresh salad
For many of us, salads are seen as the side piece to a full-blown meal. This is a grave fallacy. Provided you’ve got a delicious recipe and the right combo of flavours and textures, a salad can form an incredibly filling and nutrient-rich main meal.
A mistake some of us make when trying to change our diets is we go all-or-nothing. We have greens for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In reality, it’s a lot easier to make better choices when we don’t feel deprived.
3. Snack on things that are high on fibre and filling
What is a snack, really? A snack is food thing that’s meant to tide you over between meals. It’s not something to leave you feeling more lethargic.
It’s best to avoid snacks that are processed and hit you with empty calories. These include all the good stuff like potato chips, milk chocolate, biccies and crackers.
Good snacks? Unroasted, unsalted nuts nuts, fruit like apples with a smearing of natural peanut butter and raw veggies with a bitta hummus on the side. This list of possible snacks that won’t totally ferk with your calorie intake is endless; these are a good start.
Or, let this frighteningly-2003 image do the talking:
4. Drink water
This is as Captain Obvious as they come but drinking water is an essential ingredient in weight management and hunger regulation.
Hunger and thirst are very easily confused. Sometimes we eat when really our body wanted a little sip of H20. How can you tell? When your brain tells you that you’re hungry, drink water. After having a fair gulp, wait 15 minutes. If you were truly hungry, the feeling of wanting to eat something won’t go away. If it does, boom, you were thirsty. Simples, really.
Avoid this confusion all together by always carrying a water bottle. It might seem cumbersome at the start, but after a few weeks of consciously remembering it, it’ll become second nature.
5. Make the effort to cook at home
This isn’t a “little thing” per say, but often times we go out to eat when making something at home is just as easy, and far more affordable.
If you’re cooking for one, there are plenty of recipes that a brilliant on the reheat, meaning you can cook ’em once and eat them throughout the week. The benefit of this is you know exactly what’s going into your food, and you can control portion size.
6. Practice eating mindfully
You’ve probably heard about how doing things mindfully can improve your mood and life. Meditation is mindful; so is yoga, and both of those things are good for you.
Eating your meals mindfully is a really easy way to gauge hunger levels and avoid overeating. A good task to try when easing your way into mindful eating is the classic sultana task:
Basically, you take a single sultana, but instead of shoving it down your gob quickly and thoughtlessly, you make an effort to take in the whole experience. How does the sultana feel between your fingers? How does it smell? What is the sensation when you sink your teeth into its flesh?
While you don’t have to go through this mental process every time you eat something, focusing on what you’re eating when you’re eating it will not only up the enjoyment of your meal, it’ll mean you’re more aware of your fullness levels. Instead of eating at your desk watching YouTube, take the meal outside and have a screenless moment. If you’ve three quarters of the way through a meal and you’re full; stop.
7. Engage in as much incidental exercise as possible
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” is a quote you’ve no doubt heard of, and it’s true. It can also be applied to exercise.
Incidental exercise is the activity we get during daily activities and can be done in little bite-size chunks throughout the day. It should form the foundation of your total daily activity and can be the difference between being overweight or not.
When you’re talking on the phone, walk around. Take the stairs. Park a little further away from the office, or, if you catch public transport, get off a stop early. While small, these little nuggets of activity will up your overall calories burned.
8. Indulge… sometimes
I liken high-sugar food to a fuck buddy you secretly have feelings for.
When you’re engaging with them, it feels damn fantastic. They’re sweet, they hit the spot. But when your time with them is over (RIP Bueno bar), you’re left feeling guilty and shit about yourself. Or, if you spend too much time with them (when you know they’re not right for you), you’ll probably get sick of them and they’ll lose their specialness.
Eating high-sugar fast food regularly is absolutely a habit, and it’s one that is easily breakable through a few different methods.
– Engage with people who eat healthily. We tend to mimic the habits of the people who are closest to us, so when possible, surround yourself with people who appreciate the benefit of eating well-balanced meals. If this isn’t possible IRL, subscribe to positive healthy eating blogs* to get inspired on what to cook. (*These aren’t to be confused with ‘clean eating’ Instagrams of bikini-clad women you aspire to look like – these are often unrealistic representations of what a ‘balance’ actually is).– Limit your treats. God damn it this is hard in the beginning, especially if you’re in a workplace that has a constant cake culture. But, if you slowly cut back how often you have treats, you’ll want for them less and less, and appreciate them so much more when you do indulge.– While it’s important to limit these treats, don’t think you have to cut them out entirely. Sugar is not the devil. Excess sugar (like excess anything, really) is the bad bit. What tends to happen when we cut things out is that we crave them even more, and end up binging.
9. When you really, really feel like something, have it
It doesn’t matter what it is. Maybe it’s a Snickers bar, a plate of fruit for lunch or oats for dinner. Sometimes when we really feel like something but force ourselves to eat what we’re “supposed” to, we end up eating that thing we really want as well. It’s a recipe for over-eating.
As long as it’s not happening all the time, sometimes it’s important to give into cravings and not chastise ourselves. After all, food should be fun.
10. Sleep
A recent study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that on days after you have limited sleep, you’re more likely to eat over 300 more calories than you need.
The other plus to getting a good night’s rest?
Sleeping is the tits.
Photo: 30 Rock.
