It is no secret that we are living in a time poor society where people believe it is hard to eat healthy. It is not hard to eat healthy, the issue lies with the fact that there are so many quick and easy food options. Food is now something that can easily be delivered to our door in the click of a button. It is not something that we think about as much, allowing us to shift focus towards different areas of our life.
As a result, eating healthy has become an after-thought for a lot of people.
Over three blog posts we will be exploring various issues that relate to the argument of eating healthy vs unhealthy.
Topics that will be discussed include:
- Common excuses and reasons for not eating consistently healthy food
- Simple tips to make nutrition easy without thinking about it all the time
- Costs vs perceived costs of eating healthy
- The stigma of food prep, how social media makes us feel bad unless we are absolute heroes.
Please keep in mind that we are not doctors or nutritionists, we are simply reflecting on our combined 45+ years in the health and fitness industry and the learning’s that over that period.
So, is it really that hard to eat healthy??
We have been doing a lot of thinking about this question recently because over the course of 2020 we had had so many people say to us:
“I just don’t have the time to make all that”
“It just tastes boring and I will get sick of it”
“I eat what my kids eat and do not want to cook more meals”
Let’s examine these questions in a bit more detail and try to unpack them. We will see if, with a bit of perspective, we can view healthy eating as an enjoyable and easy process.
I just don’t have the time to make all that
“There is no-one busy in this world, it is always just about priorities. You will always find time for the things you feel important”
This quote, sums up the situation about not having enough time perfectly. We always find time for the things that are most important to us, for things higher up on the priority list.
There are no more hours in the day for the world’s most successful people than for the rest of us. They just use the time available to them more efficiently.
What we need to do is ensure that our priorities are in the right order.
Food is like nothing else in this world, we need it to survive. However, we will not die if we eat food that is unhealthy and nutrient deficient (in the short term at least).
Our body is incredibly good at adapting to the situation it is put in. As a result is often a direct reflection of how we are treating it.
For example;
A lot of people use time as an excuse to order take away food. “I do not have enough time to cook so I will order take away”.
With all the advertising out available about that food being faster with its quick delivery times, we believe that it actually quicker than cooking. However, usually in the time it takes for take away to get delivered, you can cook a perfectly nutritious meal.
So what the lack of time excuse is saying is:
- “it is more of a priority to sit down on the couch than it is to cook a meal.”
- “I cannot be bothered cooking.”
Don’t get us wrong, happens to the best of us, but it can be eliminated.
Now of course, there are always going to be exceptions to this where time is a genuine issue.
Fortunately, there are lots of different tactics that you can utilise to enable the right decisions when that occurs.
I.e. having a few pre-cooked home meals in the freezer so you can defrost it if necessary.
You are only going to do this if eating correctly is a priority for you though.
Long story short, you have to make correct nutrition and healthy eating a priority for you. If it is, then it is incredibly easy to eat well. Time will not be an issue anymore. If it is not, then you will always be fighting an uphill battle.
It just tastes boring and I will get sick of it
“A recent study out of the universities of Bangor and Bristol in the United Kingdom focused on sugar preferences amongst obese, overweight and lean populations when consuming sugar-filled beverages. The researchers found that overweight and obese people had a dulled sensitivity to the sweetness in these drinks and an enhanced subconscious liking for sweet food. When testing their lean population, including people who did not already have a preference for sweets, they found that having them drink two sugary drinks for just four weeks dulled their sensitivity to the taste (reducing their enjoyment of the drink) and also enhanced their preference for sweeter foods/drinks.
This study shows how powerful just a small amount of sweet food/drink is needed to change your perception of taste. It also provides an answer to why Americans are high-sugar consumers. When we consume high sugar foods/drinks frequently, our taste buds become more and more acclimated to the taste and have a dulling affect. Such treats become less of a reward, and instead, cause you to crave more sweet foods and drinks and start compromising your health, weight and energy.”
This is a topic that can, and does get debated all the time.
The impact that sugars have on the body is detrimental for it’s ability to function correctly.
If you go without sugar for an extended period of time, the next time you have it, everything tastes very sweet.
However, the more sugar you consume, the more your body dulls its taste. As a result, you need to consume more to get the same feeling and taste as before.
This is not only dulling the body to the taste of sugar, but making other sugar-free options taste bland and boring. Often distorting how flavoursome they really are. This is a vicious circle and it is really detrimental to healthy and tasty food, whilst also making sugar more addictive.
The same has been said about high fat, highly processed fast foods;
“[The sense of taste] is in a bad way,” Steven A. Witherly, PhD, president and CEO of Technical Products Inc., a food-consulting firm in Valencia, Calif., tells WebMD. “Fast food has ridiculously high levels of salt, fat, and sugar — and the brain likes salt, fat, and sugar.”
Everyone has about 10,000 taste buds on his or her tongue (although these may thin as people grow older). “Fast food does not so much dull the taste buds as affect how the brain processes that taste as pleasurable or unpleasant,” Witherly says. Hormones such as insulin and leptin also affect the brain’s impression of a given food. “Snack food is affecting how we process food.”*
If you have not had fast food in a long time, the first time you have it, it tastes horrible. You can taste the oil and the fat and your brain and body both say no.
Continually eating this however, all of a sudden your body dulls its response to the flavour. Whilst you still might feel rubbish after eating it physically, mentally your brain is saying, “well that wasn’t as bad as last time, next time it might be better still”.
The cycle continues, and eventually when you do eat something healthy, your body has no idea what it is. It does not taste very good because it doesn’t have the fats and bad oils that the body has come to expect from the junk options.
Long story short…
The more sugar and processed fats you consume, the more the body dulls its response to it and the more you want to eat it.
When this occurs, the sugar free and lower fat options taste bland and boring because that is what your brain is telling you. It wants the sugar it craves so it is going to tell you to eat more of it, not the healthy stuff.
Tip: Cut out all sugar and processed food for 10 days. After the 10 days are up, if you firstly do not feel more energized and happy, if you also try a new, healthy and flavorsome meal that does not taste different than it did 10 days earlier, go back to the sugar if you please.
I eat what my kids eat and do not want to cook more meals or My kids eat different food because the adults eat different things
Note: We do not have kids ourselves, and understand that when people who don’t have kids give advice on this topic it can be seen as unwarranted and out of context. Let’s just say this once more, all we are doing is reflecting on experiences and knowledge gained over the last 45+ years in the health and fitness industry.
These two statements are the two that we tend to find the most frustrating.
Children look up to their parents like they are superheroes. The formative years of a child’s life are so important. They form impressions around all aspects of how a person should behave.
It is so important that your child eats a balanced, healthy and nutritious food plan. There is absolutely no reason why they cannot eat most of the foods that their parents eat.
What is it saying to your child when you eat a completely different meal to them or eat the same food as them but actively do not enjoy it?
One of the big responses we get when we respond to this is “my child does not enjoy eating most foods” or “my child is very picky with their food and will only eat…..and that is not something I enjoy eating (i.e chicken nuggets or fish fingers)”.
Children growing up will follow the lead of their parents, as they are the leaders of the pack and the children are the pups, they want to be like the leader.
They adapt and mimic behavior as a way of learning.
What an incredible opportunity to create a healthy and nutritious atmosphere for your child to grow up in. Get them actively involved in the cooking process, give them a job and ownership of it, sit down as a family and eat your creations.
Turn dinnertime into a time where you can all eat the same thing together. If they don’t like it, try again with something new or the same thing dressed in a different way.
If your child sees a wonderful and tasty meal created in front their eyes, they are much more likely to eat it rather than something that has just been placed in front of them. It is about learning, growing and developing the appreciation of healthy food, and it is a great chance to bond as a family in the process.
These three questions are some of the biggest things that people tell us are hurdles to eating a consistently healthy and nutritious way of life.
Do you have to be healthy and nutritious all of the time?
Of course not, we are all human, things happen. We go out, we have the occasional bad meal, but what I can say is that it is MUCH better for your body if your eat the occasional bad meal mixed in with predominantly healthy and nutritious options than it is to eat predominantly bad food with the occasional healthy meal. It is not that hard to eat healthy.
In the next blog we will discuss some simple tips to making nutrition easy as well as talk about food preparation.
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