As I have been fortunate enough to grow up with parents that are health savvy (well at least my mum is – my dad loves crisps and beer like it is a religion) I was regularly exposed to healthy options and had quite a healthy upbringing. Partly also due to my time in Thailand, the reasons for that will be discussed later on. This slightly changed when I started “taking care of myself”; in the first year I got a bigger dress size without really even noticing. Hence the quotation marks. Still, I didn’t care too much about healthy eating and would vary from eating loads to eating virtually nothing, depending on what I thought was my choice in food. Some of the reasons this happened can be found here.

How do we change to healthier beings?

With obesity skyrocketing, majority of the people are feeling lost, frustrated and desperate for a change. Many people do not feel happy with their current weight and so they try and do something about it.

What do we believe we should do? Diet and exercise. This is the simple version, but diet has a negative association with starving yourself. When I am referring to diet, I mean lifestyle, not the starvation fad. Instead, I believe the better way is to gradually change your portions sizes, figure out why you are eating what you are eating, amongst with the most important factors: unresolved emotions & psychological factors.

To become healthy, I don’t think you need to completely give up chocolate, crisps or things like that. I mean, who could live without chocolate, eh ladies? *wink*

Anyways, I recognize we are humans and sometimes we want to eat something simply because it is so delicious. I think there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you keep yourself to a certain portion size and mindful or what you are eating.

As a foodie myself, I understand the joys of tastes, sensations, textures. I am not writing this to convince you that it is easy to change a lifestyle, it takes effort and determination as all great feats do, but gradually adjusting and seeing the difference it makes is easier than starving yourself, feeling unhappy and guilty when eating anything.

Cutting out everything is not (necessarily) the answer

The whole diet fad where you are stuck eating cabbage soup or just one thing are horrible, I know this. I’ve tried the baby food one – lasted one day. Tried the calorie counting which ended up with me justifying eating cookies somehow. Also tried the zero snacking policy which lead me to moments of weakness where I would fill myself with naughty treats, causing me to feel immensely guilty and more importantly, demotivated. Diets are mostly unrealistic, outdated and based on things we wouldn’t enjoy eating if we weren’t forced. It is almost as if majority of diets are made for us to fail and if we do not fail, we don’t enjoy anything except the weight loss. Even the juicing fast, a well known cleansing diet, causes the body to go to starvation mode. If you want to lose weight, you don’t want to go from eating too much to eating too little do you? Not only should you want to live healthily, our body has needs.

Personal attitude towards fad diets

Sometimes, people have trouble letting go of one particular food or snack, usually something like pizza, crisps, fizzy pop, chocolate. I want to look into the psychological, chemical and emotional reasoning first. If this doesn’t solve the problem, there are other tips to try.

Fad diets are fanatic about rules. You get a few do’s and a million don’ts. Applying the law of attraction, it is easy to see what goes wrong. The diets don’t always explain clearly why you should find these things repulsive and then starts stating a big list which probably ends up with you wanting it more! Why? Law of attraction focuses on the power of thought. It is well known that if I say don’t think about brownies, all you are thinking about is brownies. Once in the mind, you will get a bit hungry whilst imagining this gooey sweet chocolaty snack. Then the diet or person says something along the lines “don’t think about it! You can not eat that anymore” and before you know it, you shall be munching down on one.

We know we want what we can’t have, but also many dieticians say don’t imagine the item of desire and they take more time mentioning things you shouldn’t eat than all the wonderful things you can eat. Believe it or not, healthy brownies exist – you just have to do a bit of online snooping (probably have to make then yourself unfortunately) one of my funniest memorable moments like this was when I was trying out Carmen Electra’s work out and she said “put away the bon bons and start working out.” Bon bons began to manifest in my mind, and even after a long work out, all I wanted was to eat 5 or 6 of them in a row. That would basically make my work out useless in regards to burning calories.

Humans are genetically predisposed to like sweet tastes and fatty tastes. It is embedded in us when we drink breast milk and therefore it comes naturally. Other tastes take a while to develop, and depending on the strength of your tongue sensors, you can handle these better or worse.

Personal food lifestyle

I love the taste of most fruits and vegetables and have trained myself to look at food with a long term attitude, creating my love for healthy foods from a logical point of view. The mind is the most powerful decider of what you eat. I enjoy the occasional (banned by diets) treat including a serving of brownie, dark chocolate, crisps, cake and so on. Sometimes twice a day and sometimes once every two days. Other than that, I eat things like cheese, bread, pasta and so on. I have been a stable weight, which is the BMI of approximately 21, well in the healthy range of 18.5 – 25. It isn’t genetics, it isn’t lack of money or purchasing power, it is the power of the mind and the ability to distinguish from the visual hunger and the physical hunger. Other factors include dealing with my emotions through creative writing instead of food.

Personal knowledge about food

In the last three years, my interest of food has heightened to a point that it is one of my main passions. I regularly watch documentaries, speeches, television shows, check social media channels for tips and information as well as reading plenty of books regarding nutrition and health. I felt compelled to share this information to you, filtering it down to the relevant content in one accessible hub.

For the overview of the health and lifestyle section layout, click here.