Small Changes make for Healthy Eating

Sometimes healthy eating is just a change in how you look at food...

In the past when I ate takeaways and tubs of ice cream and I needed to be more healthy and "diet" I would think "öh great now I have to cut out all this yummy stuff I love!" 
I would begrudge myself and the food I ate. Instead of looking for delicious alternatives I would pout and sulk and be miserable. Years later and many mind shifts later - I see food in a totally different way. I still love a good pizza! but how I want to treat myself and my body has changed in my thinking.

SLIGHT CHANGES:
Its a slight change over weeks and months and even years:
After slowly changing bit by bit - by doing the little things like cutting down on sugar and swopping fizzy cool drinks like Coke! (which is now a swear word in our house) to fruit juice and water.

TRY IT:
Simply buy sparkling spring water and 100% real fruit juice with no additives and mix them together.
So when I felt like a coke I would reach for my "new" sparkling friend - juice and sparkling water and feel like i wasn't depriving myself.

You see its the little things!
I no longer see food as a happiness pile of stuff to eat what I want. I see food as a source of health and yumminess! I want to treat my body right. Once you cut out bad items like coke and soft drinks filled with sugar  and stop eating sweets and candy bars and you feel great - after the initial  detox (headaches and flu symptoms)
I was so ALIVE and happy and well that when I went back to eating a piece of candy it made me feel yuk! It wasn't that that sugar wasn't nice in my mouth but the after effects just weren't worth it.

EXAMPLE:
After cutting out MSG and other additives and preservatives out of our diet for some time (months and months) we went to a braai and the food was taking long. The husband and I were getting hungry and there were bowls of flavoured crisps around so we started snacking. After eating several handfuls the food was finally ready and we ate. Now I didn't have any alcohol of any kind but the next morning I woke up with hangover type symptoms - sore head and felt terrible. Just yukky and wanted to sleep! I realised after a while of waking up and trying to figure out what I ate and drank why I would feel this way and the only thing different were the MSG laden crisps (which we don't eat! only plain salted allowed in our house)!! and that when it hit me - my disgusting hang over symptoms were from them - now I will never go back to eating crisps because I could feel what they were doing to my body!

GOOD HABITS :
I find that changing things bit by bit over long periods of time that I am able to change my habits. If I try change everything at once I feel like I am punishing myself and then I would go back to my bad ways but if I picked one or two things then it was a small change and I would keep doing it. Then after a long time of doing that one little thing it would have become part of my lifestyle (like no more soft drinks) I don't even go to that aisle in the supermarket any more. Actually I rarely shop at a supermarket - but thats another story for another day. I don't even consider it in my head. If someone asks me to bring drinks to a braai (BBQ) I simply buy sparkling water and organic fruit juice. Simple as pie. Really its not even a battle for me any more.

IDEAS:
So focus on something small like:

• Stopping sugar in your tea and coffee

• Swopping soda for fruit juice and water

• Buying hormone free meat and eggs

• Not eating candy - buy nuts and dark chocolate (70% cocoa and higher)

"Eat cake if you bake it yourself and can limit the sugar and additives"

WILL YOU TRY IT?:
See if you can change that one little thing for 2 months and then consider swopping another thing and another thing. Eventually in a year or twos time you will be a healthy, whole food, happy person who doesn't even crave the bad stuff and is happier for it!
Just try it
 
We still eat really dark chocolate and nuts and i bake cake-but I use gluten -free flour and only a tiny bit of sugar. See what I did swopped out  unhealthy for healthy) 


What changes have you made in your lifestyle to be healthier?