Do you think that you understand the issues of proper nutrition after reading a couple of articles in women's magazines? Think that the proverbial “no eating after six” and the elimination of fat from the diet will help you get rid of subcutaneous fat? You are greatly mistaken. A healthy, beautiful and lean body is achieved in a more balanced way.
In order to prevent excess weight from returning, the following principles of proper nutrition must be observed:
Diet balance. This means that you should regularly receive your individual norm of BJU (proteins, fats and carbohydrates);
Thirst and hunger are equivalent for the body. If after eating the feeling of hunger does not go away, then the body does not have enough water. The daily rate is 0.3 ml. per 1 kg of weight;
Seasonality in the diet. In the warm season, include more fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet. They are much more useful than those sold in stores in winter;
Learn to cook. Fast food, canned food and fast food is rather not healthy, but harmful to our body and slagging it. And this directly interferes with weight loss;
Chew food thoroughly. Small and well-chewed pieces are digested much faster in our body. That is why eating "on the go" is not beneficial for our digestive tract;
The main part of the diet - before lunch. No wonder doctors and nutritionists make lunch the largest in terms of food volume. In the morning, our body has not yet woken up, and carbohydrates in the evening go mainly to body fat;
Breakfast is a very important meal. Our body uses energy even when we sleep. That is why, even if you eat well at night, you feel hungry in the morning. Do not neglect breakfast and make it as complete as possible;
Cooking method plays an important role. It is best to stew or boil food when cooking. Or cook for a couple. It is these methods that maximize the preservation of useful substances in cooked products.
95% of those who have lost weight return to their previous weight, because they do not carry out psychological work on themselves - they do not develop, which would help maintain the result. During weight loss, they know only two words “must” and “no”, which after losing weight turn into “no longer necessary” and “already possible”. In the meantime, lose weight, obsess over food, daydream, think about food, suffer from any restrictions, struggle all day with the question “What to eat?”, jump from one diet to another when you need to work on a healthy relationship with food.
Losing 5-10-20-30-60 kg by putting your teeth on the shelf and putting yourself in tight rein is not a success. And if, when losing weight, you managed to develop eating disorders, then it is also difficult to call it successful.
Successful weight loss is when it’s natural for you to keep the result, when you succeeded, understand yourself and your needs, maintain or, conversely, develop a healthy attitude towards food.
What is a healthy relationship with food?
1) Understanding that there will always be food
Many overeat not because of hunger or increased appetite, but because of the “now or never” thinking. For some, this happens on a holiday, when one piece of cake is not enough, because "a birthday happens once a year." Someone overeats while traveling, trying to taste all the exotic dishes that are not at home. And someone every day instead of a 15-gram portion of chocolate eats a whole bar, and instead of one piece of pizza - half. Most often this happens with a feeling of anxiety or discomfort: “I don’t have any left”, “I have to finish the last bite”, “I won’t try this again”, “once a year you can”, etc.
You can enjoy one serving if you don’t rush anywhere and understand that the food will not disappear anywhere. author Ekaterina Golovina It is important not just to refuse, but to realize that now the body does not need it / does not contribute to weight loss / does not bring any benefit. To change your attitude to food, you need to learn to enjoy it, and not to cram - to take it in a relaxed atmosphere, casting aside worries and focusing on its taste.
2) Ability to listen to the signals of your body
Probably, everyone has a girlfriend who eats absolutely everything and as much as she wants, but at the same time remains slim. The key word is as much as you want. This is called a healthy relationship with your diet. Most slender people do not have a good metabolism, but an internal sensor that tells them. And in obese people, the connection between the brain and the stomach is often broken, so they are advised to eat for about 20 minutes so as not to listen to the signal from the stomach that there is no free space.
3) Refusal to repeat past negative experiences
Once upon a time, I ate sweets or cookies every day, watched movies with a bag of chips, cooked a lot on holidays and almost always felt depressed and lethargic, and also weighed 85 kg, was unhappy with myself and insecure.
Having abandoned this experience, improved nutrition, fell in love with training, I lost 30 kg, and at the same time my attitude towards myself and life changed. Large meals made me fat, so when determining the size of my portions, I am guided by the real needs of KBJU and the feeling of hunger / satiety. Feasts for the holidays unsettled me for a long time, so I only cook light meals or celebrate the holidays away from home. Sweets, cookies, chips, if I eat, it is extremely rare. I acknowledge that past negative experiences led me to 85 kg and consciously refuse to repeat past mistakes.
4) The ability to enjoy and stretch pleasure
Have you ever seen how ordinary people eat? Not losing weight / swinging, but simple slender people. Not? Go to a cafe and have a look. They communicate, interrupt, do not rush anywhere, are here and now. For them, food is the background, they enjoy the atmosphere, communication.
Yes, you can enjoy not only the food, but also the environment. And you can enjoy food, slowly, stretching the pleasure. Like good wine, favorite music, pleasant company. I once mentioned the habit-building exercise from Penman/Williams' Mindfulness. In the early chapters, they give another good exercise, Chocolate Meditation. The bottom line is to eat one square of chocolate for as long as possible, noting all the shades of its taste. This exercise completely changes the perception of food.
5) The ability to give time to your desires
What do you do if you want, for example, ice cream? How quickly do you make a decision to buy it and eat it? What are you guided by when choosing a portion? I always recommend to my clients to bide their time, instead of running to the store at the first thought. I suggest that they distract themselves (many have a list of distracting activities) for twenty minutes, and only then decide. In most cases, a person understands that he is already old enough to indulge his own, but if the desire is still as strong, then he can eat ice cream, provided that it is a small portion and it fits into the KBJU.
6) Refusal of grades
A healthy attitude to nutrition is, first of all,. There is no "good" or "bad" food. There is the food that the body needs, and the one in which there is no need. When 10-20% of calories are allocated for the latter, and 80-90% for the former, this reduces the likelihood of breakdowns, allows you to stick to the diet longer and save the result later. No bans, no cheat meals, no gluttony. The control of KBJU gives more freedom than it seems, but psychological work on oneself is necessary.
Unhealthy eating is a global problem that has emerged in recent decades, caused by the abundant production of so-called synthetic food produced using modern technologies. Such food, very far from natural, is highly addictive and has a bad effect on physical, psychological health and, as a result, on beauty.
shutr.bzA lot of people eat, alas, in order to calm down and console themselves, to please with emotions from delicious food, although in fact food should be perceived only as a way to saturate your body, and comfort and emotions should be found in other things. Agree? After all, all these our "eaters" of their problems often crawl out with other problems, so hated by women - extra pounds that cannot be lost in any way, and dislike for themselves.
And now the burning question: how, well, how to cultivate in yourself this most correct attitude to food ?! No panic! All in our hands. Yours, to be exact. After reading about these ten steps to a healthy eating experience, you will be surprised how simple it really is. So, you have to...
Sounds pretentious, doesn't it? Well, let. If you are determined to stop trampling cakes and chocolate at the slightest quarrel with a man, realizing that this is extremely wrong, then you have already taken the first important step. Your subconscious has actually been semaphoring you for a long time about the wrong state of things - your depression, dissatisfaction with yourself, poor health and other gloomy things. Now it remains to pull it out of the subconscious and move it to another layer. This is called awareness.
When you want to change something, but you don’t know how, you involuntarily get lost: where to start. You have already begun to change in your mind, and now you need a motivating atmosphere and support. The Internet comes to the rescue - look for thematic forums and communities by asking questions like “Healthy eating”, “How to stop overeating”, “How to get rid of bad eating habits”, and so on.
An excellent motivation is attending any seminars and club meetings on healthy eating, fortunately, now in any yoga school or women's training center you can find a lot of all kinds of offers. Entrance to such events is quite inexpensive, and often even free. With like-minded people, progress will go by leaps and bounds. But just be careful - listen to advice, listen, but be sure to correlate the information received with your life experience, health, acceptability range and, in the end, with intuition - how much all this suits you and will ultimately benefit.
Every time you approach the refrigerator or stove, ask yourself the question: who wants to eat - you (your physical body) or your brain, languishing from missing or excessive emotions? You can even hang a poster on the fridge that says something like, “Are you sure you want to eat?” Develop a ritual before you sit down at the table, ask yourself out loud: “How do I feel? What I want?" You also need to answer these questions out loud. Are you tense and want to calm down? Tired and want to relax?
When you answer yourself: “Relax”, you already get a ready answer: you really don’t want to eat. When you talk to yourself like this for the first time, you will be shocked by the result: you will clearly understand where physiological hunger is, and where irrepressible emotions are, forcing you to fill your stomach with anything. This is an important step towards a healthy relationship with food.
shutr.bz This step follows smoothly from the previous one. In fact, for the most part, we have long forgotten how to distinguish between what is physical hunger and what is emotional eating. The reason is that we stuff ourselves with something as soon as we start to feel something - especially when it comes to disturbing, negative thoughts. In fact, the body needs at least six hours to really get hungry.
Physical hunger is felt in the stomach, not in the brain, and is uncomfortable if ignored for a long time, such as dizziness, a feeling of being sucked in the stomach. But the emotional background with true hunger remains calm and serene when the appetite makes you irritated, grumble and does not allow you to concentrate on other thoughts.
You have no idea how useful this is! Write for yourself, fix what it means to have a healthy attitude to food. You will be surprised at how many positive changes and emotions a change of attitude brings with it. Describe everything in detail: those foods that you associate with a positive attitude towards food, how they affect your body, do not forget to say how you would like healthy food to strengthen and decorate your body. Write about what you ate before, succumbing to emotions.
This is fine. At first, you can enthusiastically eat only grated carrots and be happy, but one day you will see your favorite chocolate and eat it, as they say, from the belly. It takes from 21 to 90 days to form a new habit, and in one week you will not become an adherent of a healthy diet. Take it easy.
If you are constantly haunted by thoughts about food, this is one of the signs of a compulsive eater (that is, psychological overeating). But don't let that scare you. Knowing that such comebacks are possible and, most importantly, normal, you can safely follow your plan.
shutr.bz Before each meal or snack, stop for a second and mentally weigh your hunger level on a scale. For example, from 1 to 5. Ask yourself: “How hungry am I right now?” When you get a response of, say, 3, you give a subconscious signal to your brain not to overeat. Or maybe you're just thirsty. Thirst can also be perceived as hunger. Then first drink water, wait 10-15 minutes and then proceed to the meal.
Don't be afraid to talk to others about what you eat because you get emotional. You are not alone. So many people, especially women, struggle with the problem of unhealthy eating habits. It is also very important, just mega important, to discuss your intention to change the way you eat with family and friends. Maybe your mom, grandma, and girlfriend will give you fewer mashed potatoes and gravy or pies if they know what you're going through and what changes you have to overcome.
The unconditional support of the family along the way is just wonderful, but if your relatives still do not understand you and claim that you are in a “sect”, take it easy and let them live the way they live. And you will definitely find like-minded people.
If you know that food relieves you of stress and discomfort, then you will have to replace the habit of eating your feelings with some other, healthier habit. Reading, journaling, work, sports, hobbies, talking with friends are all great alternatives. A great opportunity to resist the food temptation is to spend the money set aside for food, cosmetics or a trip to a beauty salon. Few women refuse to get high under the hands of a masseur for an hour and a half instead of sandwiches with smoked sausage.
shutr.bz Changing things can be very difficult. You can break, as we said above. But there is a wonderful way to keep these breakdowns in check and, most importantly, not let yourself get discouraged because of these breakdowns. Allow yourself to eat something wrong and unhealthy from time to time. This system is called cheating and brings very good results. Knowing that on the weekend you will eat a piece of fat and sweet napoleon, all week you will calmly walk past the windows of pastry shops without the slightest feeling of oppression. Each time it will get easier. The key to success is to keep going even when you give up.
Do you think these ten steps will help you on your path to a healthy relationship with food? Which of them do you consider the most effective? What are you doing to change your relationship with food?
A very interesting and very rare study on the difference in attitudes towards food between Americans, Japanese and Europeans (namely the Flemish part of Belgium and France). As the authors of the study explain, the United States was included in the programdue to the fact thatAmericans are more than anyone, concerned with the topic of "healthy eating". Japan you are famous the highest duration yuh life as well Belgium and France— "French paradox" (comparatively low level of cardiovascular and oncological diseases with a high-calorie diet and an abundance of fat in it).
The aim of the study was to find out what people from different countries and cultures think about the relationship between food, diet and health, as well as analyze the interaction of "negative" (anxiety, fear, threat) and "positive" (enjoyment, anticipation, social contact) aspects of food.
The study involved students (from 150 people in Japan to 330 in Belgium) and people of more mature age (from 75 in Japan to 250 in France).
7 significant factors were identified for assessing attitudes towards food:
1. FAT/SALT REDUCED DIET
Low-fat/low-salt diets, regular use of these approaches.
2 CONCERN
Preoccupation: knowing what, when and how to eat properly. And again, attempts to constantly apply this knowledge in practice.
3. WORRY
Anxious component: food as an enemy, danger, etc.
4. DIET-HEALTH LINK
Dietary Approach/Healthy Eating: Treating food as a source of health, trying to diet or stick to a "good diet".
5.PLEASURE IMPORTANCE
The importance, the significance of the pleasure of eating.
6. CULINARY ASSOCIATIONS
Culinary associations (i.e., how a person relates to food from a culinary point of view - pasta with sauce, bread and butter, and not counting carbohydrates, proteins and fiber).
7. HEALTHY EATER
Healthy eater (Does the participant feel they are eating properly).
The illustration clearly shows what a consistent difference between the representatives of the countries.
The second graph is the attitude to the above factors among men and women. 
Conclusions: there were significant differences in attitudes towards food and health in different countries. The biggest gap is between American women and French men
mi. The irony is that Americans, who are more concerned about proper, dietary nutrition than others, are less likely than other countries to consider themselves "healthy eaters." The researchers suggest that Americans' over-concern with proper food and diets may be counterproductive - as there are many studies that show the connection of the pleasure of food with health. The ability to enjoy satiety is one of the most important components of physical and mental well-being. By the way, body mass index (BMI) has nothing to do with these seven factors, except for the “anxiety” item - it was higher by 10% in people with elevated BMI.
Differences between men's and women's approach to nutrition do not depend on the country. Everywhere, dietary, proper nutrition worries more women, food often causes them anxiety. It is a fact that has long been known to science that most women consider their bodies to be “fatter” than the ideal and make various attempts to control nutrition in order to achieve this ideal. It is interesting that women still cook more often, but they are less concerned about the culinary component of dishes than men, the combination of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates is of primary importance.
The final conclusions are that the Americans have a lot to learn from the French. And first of all, the attitude to food is not as a daily stress, but as a necessary pleasure for the body and psyche.
Translation - Yulia Lapina, IntuEat Center for Intuitive Eating ©
