Most of us are more knowledgeable than we let on about what we should be eating. That's right, I'm on to you!
But you probably have said those words before sitting down with the tub of Oreo ice cream.
If you’re looking to find sustainable fixes to the common nutrition challenges we have, more overwhelming nutrition knowledge probably isn’t what will do the trick.
Neither would a new diet. Or a meal plan.
Nope – if you’re struggling with food, eating and exercising, I would bet my money (it’s okay, I don’t have a lot) that you need help with your habits – especially with being consistent with the good habits.
So let's see if we can cover some common ones today!
Common Nutrition Challenge: I often stress eat or emotional eat Been there, done that. And then did it again.
If you can relate to snacking when you’re not hungry or getting really intense cravings, you’re not alone.
Stress eating and emotional eating are usually a part of a behavior that is triggered by a specific experience – like a feeling, thought and/or situation. If you can figure out what the trigger was, you can disrupt the behavior.
A habit you can try here is to pause when you’re eating when not hungry or giving into an intense craving – and really focus on what just occurred, or what you were thinking or feeling that could have sent you running to food. Keeping a log of these occurrences can help you notice a pattern too. Common Nutrition Challenge: I don’t plan any meals Planning and prepping your meals can seem really overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be complicated at all.
A great place to start is to plan out just a few meals a week instead of all of them. Pick your busiest days/nights and decide what would be easy to have prepared for those times. Keep the meals you plan simple and even similar to each other so you need less ingredients and less time to prepare them. Much like most of my healthy lifestyle advice – start with small steps first, get consistent with them and then work on adding more steps. Common Nutrition Challenge: I have a sweet tooth This one is verrrrrry common and normal! Not only do sweet foods appeal to most of us, but food manufacturers have perfected the formula of sugar, fat and salt that turns us into mindless eating machines – they’ve created food items that are literally irresistible to our taste buds and brains. The actual challenge with these foods is their availability – they are everywhere! So one way to counter it is to have less of it in your house. Of course, I’m not saying it’s off limits – but how about instead of the jumbo pack of Oreos, you pick the regular package.
And how about instead of 4 variety of chips, you have 1 (perhaps even your least favourite kind so you’re less likely to over do it). When it comes to this challenge, I like to keep most sweet foods (except for fruit) out of my house. That way, if I actually – like really, really, truly – want the sweet – I have to go out and get it. Makes me think twice about it and usually I settle for fruit (because….lazy).
What's your challenge??