Six Simple Ways To Improve Your Eating Habits
1. If it wasn’t a food when your grandmother was a girl, it isn’t a food now.
Back in the day, food was food. It was grown and then either killed, picked or harvested. After that it was off to market where you could buy and sell, take it home and cook it up.
Milk was milk, bread was bread and the fruit and veg looked and tasted like the real thing. There was no manufactured, vitamin enriched, omega 3 enriched ‘stuff’ to buy.
Stick with the basics, avoid foods for the most part in bags, boxes and tins, shop at farmers markets (or at least the local green grocer) and eat some real food!
2. Avoid eating foods with ingredients you don’t have at home.
When was the last time you cooked something at home and the recipe called for xanthan gum or guar gum or calcium peroxide I will assume never because they are not ingredients that you or I need or want (see point one). Some of these additives and ingredients may cause little or no harm to humans, but the problem is that many of these ingredients haven’t been around for that long and we don’t know what the effects may be. Keep it simple and only eat foods (and ingredients) that you would cook with yourself.
3. Eat foods that will rot.
Those foods that sit nicely on the shelves in the supermarket will probably be happily sitting there in six or 12 months time. Check out the pictures below of a McDonalds Happy Meal celebrating its first birthday! That’s the power of preservatives. They are added to foods to make them last longer and look better for longer. (See point number one again!) Most of the foods you should be eating for optimal health and fat loss will rot if you don’t eat it soon enough. That other rubbish, the foods that aren’t going to be good for your health or fat loss, they will sit in your pantry calling your name time and time again until you finally eat them!
4. Consider being a ‘flexitarian’
I’m not a fan of the vegetarian diet for a number of reasons. That doesn’t mean however that I have no care for animals. I am totally against animal cruelty but I think there is a need for humans to eat some animals some of the time. You simply cannot get everything you need nutritionally with a vegetarian diet. Having said all of that, I do believe that there is some merit in the vegetarian diet, and the halfway mark shall be known as ‘Flexitarian’ (which should suit most bodybuilders as well!!)
There’s a few options for going flexi, try being meat free for one or more days per week or decrease your portion size or meat an increase your veggie intake.
5. Eat sweet foods the way nature intended them to be.
Ever notice how most naturally sweet foods are accompanied by equally high levels of fibre? Probably not, but it’s natures way of slowing the absorption of these sugars and helping you to feel full before you eat too much. Consider that when you compare eating some whole fruit compared to drinking juice or snacking on high sugar lollies. (Point number one should be mastered by now!) Keep it natural and treat yourself to some local, in season fruits and berries for that sweet, nutritious hit.
6. Enjoy some treats and junk foods as long as you make it yourself.
To keep sane, you need to let go every now and then. But with keeping in line with points one and two, when you want to eat something that isn’t necessarily going to help you achieve you health and fitness goals, at least try to limit the damage! It is so easy to head to the store and load up on all sorts of junk food, go home, sit down and eat it all. No consider how much of that you would eat if you have to make it all first. Fries, biscuits, chocolates etc, will probably not only taste better, but you will be less inclined to eat so much when you have toiled hard to make them in the first place.
