Ten ways to eat healthier without necessarily eating different foods!!
Just pottering through my days lately I am noticing how lazy I can be if I am not mindful. How easy it is to live each day mindlessly, doing familiar things every day without thought or appreciation. So I thought it about time to start reminding ourselves to appreciate the small things. Below are a few ideas to improve your health and maybe help weight loss without actually changing what you eat. Just how you eat.
Although be warned…I know my food choices often change (for the better) when I am more mindful of how I am eating.
- Firstly be exactly that. Mindful as you are eating. Start being mindful before you actually eat. In the Western world we are rarely so famished for nutrition that we are starving for the food on our plates. Instead we are just used to rushing ahead into things without pause. So please pause and notice how your meal looks. The colours, the presentation., the textures of the food and how it looks on your plate. Notice if you always eat the same colours, especially if this colour is the brown/ beige of pasta, bread, rice, chips/ potatoes. None of which may be bad for you in moderation.
Like with anything knowledge is often the first step into change. When we pause to notice what we are eating; maybe we start to present it with more care, prepare it with more awareness and choose it with intent to make it different from your last meal and interesting to look at as well as eat.
- Now to eat. Eat more slowly. Chew each mouthful. I am not going to tell you to chew each mouthful 20-50 times (although if you will that is fantastic) but please chew and swallow one mouthful BEFORE you pick up any more food on your fork. So don’t be filling a new forkful immediately after putting one in your mouth. Enjoy what you have before you go looking for more (this applies in so many aspects of life so try starting with a fork full and notice how much more able you are at appreciating other things in life)
- Eat for what you will be doing NOT for what you have done!! Breakfast like a king and dine like a pauper.
- Take the food to your mouth not your mouth to the food. Don’t lean forward taking your head to your plate, scrunching up your digestive system. Instead sit up properly, at a table preferably. Allow your digestive organs the space to do what they do.
- Eat with your mouth closed, obvious maybe, maybe just good manners. However whenever I am around people eating I notice how many people seem unable to do so. Conversations should also be continued between mouthfuls not while food is in the mouth. This will aid digestion as you are not swallowing air with your food.
- Drink, but not too much with your meal. Maybe make sure you are sufficiently hydrated between meals so you don’t need to swill down huge quantities with your meal. If it isn’t tea, coffee, water or fruit juice it is probably not necessary
- Sit down to eat. If you haven’t time to sit down to eat then change something in your life so you have. Prioritize you and your health., a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association finds 59% of young women eat on the run. Eating on the go and standing up encourages us to eat mindlessly, consume more fat, more fizzy drinks and more fast and processed food. Sit down, remove distractions and focus on your food, Your body and your mind, and probably your waist line will be happier and work more effectively for doing so.
- Judge food by it’s cover. If it’s in packaging it may well be processed rather than natural. Plus perfluorochemicals on food containers may lower fertility so lower your use of packaged food and lower your contact with PFCs
- If you don’t buy it then it isn’t there to eat. Especially in the cold evenings you are not likely to go out to buy the biscuits that you’d have maybe eaten if all you needed to do was open a cupboard door for them. So don’t buy unhealthy food and find you eat it less.
- Don’t follow fads and fashions, eat what your body needs not what society tells you is the latest fashion. Eating mindfully you’re more able to notice when you’re full, when foods suit your digestion and when things make you feel uncomfortable or tired.
Don’t follow low fat, gluten free or juicing diets without listening to your body…does your body really need to follow these fashions or would it be better eating mindfully, eating simply and eating slowly and well. Change your eating habits and notice how energised and well you feel once your body is more able to function at its best.