STOP DIETING AND START EATING HEALTHY

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about healthy eating? All the unhealthy foods you’ll have to give up?

There’s a huge difference between healthy eating and dieting.

Dieting is limiting.

It focuses too much on restricting what you can eat instead of enjoying good food. Plus, most fad diets have a specific set of rules that categorize foods as either good or bad.

Dieting tends to focus way too much on weight loss; you need to keep losing pounds in order to feel motivated. As soon as you reach your goal weight, or your weight plateaus, your motivation fades.

It’s no surprise that two-thirds of people who diet end up splurging on “bad foods” when they stop dieting, regaining most, if not all, of the weight they had lost.

Healthy eating, on the other hand, is very liberating.

Almost ALL foods can fit into a healthy diet, so you don’t have to stick to a limited selection of “good foods” or completely avoid “bad foods.”

Healthy eating encourages you to make small incremental changes over time instead of one big change like most fad diets recommend. Your diet changes constantly depending on what your needs are at any given time.

Transitioning from Dieting to Healthy Eating

Lifelong healthy behaviors are not motivated solely by weight loss.

You have to genuinely want to live a healthier life.

Weight loss can still be a factor but it isn’t the only reason why you’re changing your lifestyle.

Focus on the Means not the End

Why do you want to eat healthy?

If your answer is that you want to lose weight or you don’t like being overweight, perhaps you’re already focusing way too much on the end goal.

What happens if you don’t lose as much weight as you wanted to lose? Will you go back to your old, unhealthy lifestyle?

Perhaps you should stop seeking validation from the scale.

Once you start focusing on the healthy changes you’re making to your lifestyle, you won’t need the temporary affirmation that comes from losing a few pounds.

Eat Good Foods Don’t Avoid Bad Foods

Healthy eating, unlike dieting, gives you a wide range of good foods to choose from. Life’s a lot more fun when you don’t spend all your time trying to avoid bread and pasta.

So don’t spend all your time trying to find healthy replacements for bad foods. Learn how to make fun meals from nutrient-rich vegetables, whole grains and fruits; indulge (don’t binge) every so often by eating your favorite guilty foods that you love so much.

Your goal should be to eat more good foods than bad the majority of the time.

This way, you don’t have to feel guilty when you eat something unhealthy. Just get back on the wagon and keep going!

Pretty simple, right?