Everyone knows that healthy eating is the cornerstone of a healthy life. However, it’s hard to know just how you eat in a healthy way. You very likely are making nutrition mistakes without even realizing it. Here are the mistakes you’re probably making right now, and how to put them right.
- Not Eating Until You’re Starving
There’s a lot of advice out there that says you shouldn’t eat until you’re hungry. It’s true that you shouldn’t eat for the sake of eating, as that leads to overeating and not making good choices as to what to eat. However, many people are waiting until they’re starving hungry to allow themselves to eat, and that’s not ideal either. At this point, you’re so hungry you’ll eat just about anything, and that leads to poor choices.
Instead, pay attention to your body and listen to hunger cues. Everyone feels them differently, so wait until you start to feel hungry, and then grab something to eat. This way you’re not overeating, and you won’t just grab the first thing you see because you’re so hungry.
- Cutting Foods Rather Than Adding Them
In a world that’s obsessed with the numbers on the scale, it’s so easy to think healthy eating is just removing things from your diet. Have you ever tried to cut out sugar, caffeine, or dairy cold turkey? It makes you feel good for a few days, but mostly because you feel like you’re doing something.
“The problem is, this is usually a temporary measure, and you’ll be back where you started. Rather than cutting foods out of your diet, try adding them. For example, add a full range of colors to your meals, using different color vegetables, or trying new foods like plant-based fats,” explains Daniel Richmond, a writer at Rated Writing and Assignment Services. Healthy eating is more about adding better choices to your diet than just cutting things out totally.
- Paying Too Much Attention To The Scales
Again, when we think of healthy eating, we often think about just losing weight or reaching a certain number on a scale. There’s nothing wrong with losing extra weight, but it’s not the best metric to track healthy eating on. Plus, if you find you’re not losing weight that quickly, it can feel rather disheartening.
When you’re embarking on healthy eating, you’ll want to find a range of measures to see how you’re doing. Remember, if you’re looking to lose weight, you’re probably going to the gym as well. That helps you gain muscle, and so you’ll gain weight at first. Pay attention to how you feel as well as the numbers on the scale.
- Being Scared To Make Mistakes
For those who are starting to eat healthy, it’s easy to worry about making mistakes. After all, you’re building new habits, and you don’t want to end up relapsing into bad ones. However, some people can start to feel rather stifled by these rules, and it makes it harder for them to really get into healthy eating.
“Instead, don’t be afraid to make those mistakes. If you slip up one time, it’s not a problem. It happens to the best of us. Instead, just start again. You’re building up those habits, and if you let yourself fall at the first hurdle you’ll never reach your goals,” says Paul Oliver, a health blogger at Essay Writing Services and Studydemic.
- Never Eating What You Want To Eat
It’s easy to think that healthy eating is all vegetables, all the time. While vegetables can be delicious, sometimes you really want a chocolate bar or a cookie. Many decide to deprive themselves of these foods, as they think they’re ‘bad’ and they shouldn’t eat them.
No food is truly ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they just have different nutritional values. If you really want that chocolate bar, you should have that chocolate bar. That way, you’re not tempted to overindulge after denying yourself what you want.
These are some of the most common mistakes that you probably don’t even know you’re making when it comes to healthy eating. Everything is a balance, and you’ll never get everything right all the time. When you can let go of the idea of being ‘perfect’, things can get a lot easier.