Why is healthy eating so difficult?

 

Last night I got talking to a lady in the supermarket, and once she discovered I was a personal trainer, she immediately wanted to ask me lots of questions about diet and healthy eating.

Should she eat brown or white rice? Is there a specific type of food she should eat or avoid if she wanted to lose weight?  Is it true that if you eat after 6pm then you are guaranteed to store bodyfat?

The questions went on, and I did my best to provide honest answers.

But you know what, most of it was just overly-complicating what should be a very simple thing.

  • We need to eat to survive – stop providing your body with the calories and nutrients it needs, and ultimately you will die.
  • If you are hungry, eat, if you are not, don’t.
  • What you eat is far more important than when you eat.
  • Eating processed food, filled with chemicals and unnecessary ingredients, will ultimately make you fat and sick.
  • Eating high quality food is the least costly insurance policy you have against illness and disease…..and the best way to help yourself heal if you are already unwell.
  • You can’t beat basic thermodynamics – calories in versus calories out determines whether you are gaining or losing weight.
  • When it comes to body composition, the type of food you eat and its effect on your hormones is perhaps more important that how many calories it contains.
  • You can’t out-exercise a bad diet.
  • Food is supposed to be appreciated and enjoyed, not shoved in your mouth mindlessly whilst you concentrate on something else.
  • If you want to be happy, have more energy, sleep well, maintain a healthy weight and live a long life, then stop buying food made in a factory, and instead cook it yourself with real ingredients – ideally from a local farm or grow it yourself.

eat more real food - healthy eating

Healthy eating is hard!

It is part of our modern conundrum in life; the more access we have had to food which is supposedly making life more ‘convenient’ for us, the fatter we have become.

Media bombards us with conflicting stories about what we should or shouldn’t eat. On one hand we are told to embrace super foods (food is just food, and some of it better for us than others), whilst at the same time being sold into the idea that the woman in the red swimsuit on the front of the cereal packet looks that way because she eats what is in the box.

Obesity rates in the UK are the highest in Europe, and in the USA it was recently announced that almost 40% of women and 35% of men are now considered obese. If you add in those who are simply overweight is is nearer to 70%…..and we are not far behind.

The reality is that if you are carrying a spare tyre around your middle, you have a much greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes or many types of cancer.

How do we turn this frightening statistic around?

My answer is that we all need to take educate yourself about what really constitutes a healthy diet, and then stick to it as much as possible. We don’t need to be perfect all time, but we have to take personal responsibility for our future by controlling what goes in our mouth.

If you were told tomorrow that you had just three months to live unless you started eating better quality food, then I bet that you would find a way to improve your diet.

Gone would be all of those excuses about having no time to prepare and cook meals, a lack of money to buy fresh meat, fish, eggs, fruits, seeds, nuts and vegetables, or your own limited knowledge.

I guarantee that you would start eating better than you do today!

So are you going to wait until that moment in the doctor’s office when you are being told that you have type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, cancer or heart disease before you take action? When you are so overweight that everything hurts and your enjoyment of life has been curtailed?

I am not trying to be cruel or point the finger.

We can all own up to it (me included), and acknowledge that we can do and be better at healthy eating than we are right now.

We can seek to educate ourselves, start to see eating ‘real food’ as a necessity and not a chore, view cakes, biscuits, crisps and chocolate as a treat and not everyday occurrence, and ultimately understand that everything which goes in your mouth is either contributing to good health or taking away from it!

I have dedicated much of my working life to helping people understand what healthy eating really means, and how to easily put it into practice.

With my honest hat on, I will confess that I also need to be more accountable in my own habits and ensure that I ‘walk the walk’.

I have managed to add some unwanted pounds over the last few months (no excuses), and unless I make a conscious effort, it could easily turn into an extra stone which will be much harder to shift.

I can’t change my past, but I can be responsible for my future.

If you need more help to understand how you can put healthy eating principals into practice, then please be sure to send me an email or comment.

 

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