Our last post on healthy eating struck a chord. Our two simple rules for making food choices was one of the most popular blog posts ever on our site.
As simple as deciding what the best thing to eat may be, though, it’s still only part of the picture. When it comes to actually choosing to buy, prepare, and eat those foods, it can be a job more easily said than done. Knowing how to change what we eat, it turns out, is a lot harder than simply knowing what to eat.
Diet change is hard. Incredibly hard, in fact. But remember that many, many people do it successfully. Here are our suggestions for making change that is both realistic and sustainable.
1. Work on One Habit at a Time
You can only make so much change in so many places at once. If you’re planning to quit smoking, join a gym, eat better, learn to paint and show up for work early every day starting tomorrow, then let’s save you the trouble right now. It’s not going to work out. If you want to change how you eat, then you might find more success by focusing on just that. Multi-tasking works no better for changing habits than it does for work, parenting or sex. Stop fooling yourself. Pick one thing and get it right.
2. Start With One Meal
You don’t need to change your entire diet today–you can start with one part. Pick a meal (we think lunch is a great choice) and work on shifting just that one. Breakfast and dinner can follow when you’ve got some success, some skills, and some momentum. This isn’t a hunger strike.
3. Focus on Adding, Not Subtracting
Trying not to eat things is really hard. Yes, there are things you almost certainly need to eat a hell of a lot less of. But you may improve your odds of doing that by displacing them with healthier choices, as opposed to just trying to resist eating. Focus more on pursuing vegetable, for example, and less on avoiding sugar. Sure, you probably need to eat fewer simple carbs, but at some point, you’re going to have to learn to eat vegetables. You might as well get started.
4. Make Sustainable Change
This is about the long term. You need to think in terms of making small, sustainable adjustments to your diet that you can maintain forever. For. Eh. Ver. It’s not a diet. It’s changing how you eat. “I’ll never eat another piece of chocolate cake,” is not only not sustainable, it’s also no fun. Extreme diets don’t make you live forever. They just make it feel that way.
What these strategies are designed to do is focus on small, sustainable changes that give you small wins, build momentum, and avoid the all-or-nothing thinking that leads to giving up completely. Think small, slow and sustainable!