Eating habits aren’t something we think of as being a problem in this modern day and age. Sure, ten thousand years ago our eating habits were very important, because if we didn’t plan and hunt and gather we wouldn’t eat at all. However, in modern society, food is available to just about anyone.
There are different qualities of food, and different reasons to eat and to not eat some foods, and our overall body goals help us to choose what we will or won’t eat, which is where eating habits come into the picture. Losing control of our eating habits is easy – we run late at work and are too tired to cook when we get home, so we order a pizza. We know it’s bad for us, but we tell ourselves it’s a once off and it’ll be fine.
When you reach the second week of fast food every night, you’ve lost control. We have put together this article to show you how to regain control over your eating habits.
Purchase Precision
To stop bad eating in its tracks, we have to look at the food available to us in our homes. If you shop when you’re hungry, all sorts of fatty, sugary and overly salty foods end up looking very attractive, and invariably we buy more of that than we should.
Make a shopping list of what you need to make a week or two worth of dinners and allow yourself one snacky item on that list, then go shopping immediately after a big meal, like a lunch. In this state of fullness, you won’t be drawn to unhealthy foods at all, and following the list will be simple and straightforward.
Portion Control
The size of the meals you eat is important when reigning in your eating habits. Most people are capable of eating a big meal and feeling overfull afterwards (it’s that feeling of slight discomfort mixed with sleepiness). This is a bad eating habit because you don’t need to eat that much unless you’re going to do a very intense workout later on.
Take a meal size you normally eat and cut it down to half that size over a period of a month, plating up less and less each time you eat it. When you eat slowly and drink fluids at the same time, you can fill up on much, much less food than might seem believable.
Meal Intervals
The intervals at which you eat your food are probably the standard set for most people in school – small breakfast in the morning, medium lunch at midday, and a large dinner in the afternoon. This has been proven time and again to be ineffectual for the human digestive system, but we continue to tell people that this is the way to eat.
To clarify, this is a better system than eating two big meals a day, but not as good as eating a big breakfast, a small morning tea, a medium lunch, a small afternoon tea, and a small dinner. This teaches your body to digest faster and store less fat, because you aren’t struggling through a lack of food. You can use meal replacement shakes as a meal replacement for your meals throughout the day for added weight loss benefits.
Meal Contents
The contents of your meal is just as important as the intervals at which you eat your food, because eating nothing but junk food is, as we’ve said before, pretty bad for you. There are obviously good carbs and bad carbs, and filling your meals with bad carbs isn’t good for you in the slightest.
These bad carbs are usually artificially refined, like hamburger buns, potato chips, cake, bread, or doughnuts. Good carbs, on the other hand, are naturally occurring, like oats, brown rice, or quinoa. Substituting your bad carbs with good ones make your meals healthier, and contribute to overall healthier eating habits.
Healthy Snacking
We have all listened to an exasperated parent or guardian suggest we have a piece of fruit if we’re hungry after lunch, and we have all silently resigned ourselves to finding an actual, decent snack instead. Unfortunately, they were absolutely right in their suggestions, and healthy snacking is a great way to stave off hunger between meals, and fruit and nuts are the best way to go for this snacking. There are also a wide variety of protein bars on the market which offer a filling alternative to unhealthy snacking.
Trail mix should be avoided, as dried fruit has a high concentration of sugar, but fresh fruit and nuts kept separately will maintain their freshness and sate your cravings for the space between meals.
Disciplined Approach
Finally, steeling yourself against the tempting sights and smells of the day-to-day is the last step toward controlling your eating habits. You might drive past a fast food outlet and smell the fried chicken and the abundance of salt, but you have to keep driving and avoid the temptation. Disciplining yourself to resist these places takes time, but once you’re there you won’t even miss them anymore.
These tips are a great way to harness your eating habits and make them work for you instead of against you. Get started today and before you know it you’ll be a happier, healthier you.
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