How to change your eating behaviors painlessly
Why make a lot of efforts when you can get what you want rather easily? Pointless, exactly.
You have decided to eat well – after all it’s for own good – and you want it to be as painless as possible. What should you do? Well here are a few concrete tips on how to go about it.
The biggest challenge when deciding to change one’s eating behavior is never really what to do but how to do it. Ideally, this should be done slowly rather than rapidly, following a step-by-step approach.
First, try to identify one eating habit you need to change and then stick to doing just that for a week or even a month. When this first change has become second nature to you, make another small change and so on and so forth… It won’t be long until you’re caught up in the virtuous circle of health and well-being.
Changes can be as simple as drinking more water, eating more vegetables or substituting sugar for healthier alternatives – check out our sweet recipes for ideas, they will delight you!
Crowding out
Don’t deprive yourself by cutting out foods you enjoy. Trying to do this often fails or leads to frustration, which creates unnecessary stress and sometimes new problems. A better approach consists in crowding out - it means adding foods into the diet rather than taking foods away. For instance, if you like having cakes or crisps, keep eating them, but at the same time try adding more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, pulses, nuts and seeds to your diet. You’ll realize after a while that your cravings for junk food have diminished. But don’t try cutting out all junk food at once, it simply wouldn’t work. In true Arab fashion, always choose the abundance approach over the scarcity approach.
Substituting
Another way to ease into healthy eating habits is to substitute sensibly some foods for healthier alternatives. For instance, instead of sugar, try using honey, maple syrup, date syrup, unrefined coconut or cane sugar. You can also satisfy your sweet tooth by eating fruits such as dates or sweet vegetables such as sweet potatoes or squash. You can substitute your afternoon coffee with tea or white rice with brown rice. Think creatively to find out which substitutions would be appropriate and most importantly enjoyable for you!
You can also trick yourself into healthy eating habits! So where will you start?
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