9 reasons why it’s so hard to stick with healthy eating
I am not a “good food” / “bad food” person.
Most of us know that processed foods or foods high in unrefined sugar, preservatives and/or some with weird ingredients that you cannot pronounce is not great for us. In fact, can we assume we know it’s bad for us, but just get down to the part where we can be non-judgemental about the fact that we crave these foods despite being “bad”, and get into solutions?
We’ve internalized our food habits into moral terms. “ Good/bad”, ”junk”, etc. etc. While the labels themselves may not be harmful, we may judge ourselves and those who eat such foods, (DESPITE knowing the perils), as somehow weak or lazy or unconcerned about their health.
This is what happens when we attach morals to food labels: we harshly judge and berate ourselves for eating or craving these foods, hence creating a cyclical pattern.
Eat “junk” food
Feel bad about yourself
Try to stop
Give up
Feel like a failure
Eat junk food
See the problem here?
There are some very real and common reasons why it’s so hard to stick with a healthy eating plan, and here’s a spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with your willpower or lack of discipline.
Our food culture makes it difficult
You’d think that a culture that judges people so harshly for not eating healthy would make it easier to eat healthy. Right? Wrong! Right now, I know of no drive-through farmer’s markets, no vegetable and fruit-vending machines and no Broccoli Huts on the way home from work.
Our food culture makes it very hard to eat healthy on a consistent basis and yet expects folks to just magically eat healthy. Let’s face it. Convenient food is cheap and available everywhere. We have to work much harder and in some cases spend more time and money to eat more nutrient-dense foods on a regular basis.
2. Your brain prefers what you used to do
Any time you try to change a habit or old behavior your brain is going to rebel a little. I mean, it’s done such a good job of automating these pesky habits you’ve been trying to quash for decades, that it’s not going to just succumb without a fight. Quite literally, what it means is that your brain is going to have to create new neural pathways and expend quite a bit of energy and effort to get it done. We’re wired to conserve energy. Recognize and accept that as you move forward. I always recommend the 3-P’s to my clients when building new and fragile behaviors: Practice, Patience and Perseverance.
3. You haven’t found recipes that you really love yet that are healthy.
You know you’re “supposed” to eat healthy but if you’re honest with yourself, if you weren’t a full-grown adult, you’d still be hiding your broccoli and peas under your napkin.
It’s ok. Take the path of least resistance.
Start with picking one or two vegetables or fruits you already like and start there. Eat more of those. Then, sample one new vegetable or fruit a week and prepare or eat it in a way you never have previously, using different temperatures, flavor profiles or cooking methods. I for one, do not like eggplant at all. I love all other vegetables and fruits. But I’ve always rejected eggplant. Yes, even eggplant parm.
It wasn’t until I realized that baba ghanouj (which I love), had eggplant as its main ingredient, that I realized how important it is to sample certain foods in many different ways before writing them off completely.
4. You’re forcing yourself to eat kale instead of finding foods that fit YOU, and that you love
You can use force or discipline to eat healthy for a while, but it’s not the path for a long-term solution. Success comes from an internal motivation to feel better or to be curious about the process of becoming healthy. If you’re white-knuckling your way into becoming healthier, it’s going to be a much thornier path for you.
5. You are too hard on yourself when you have setbacks
Let me save you the element of surprise. You WILL have setbacks. You just will. Life gets in the way sometimes even when you have the best plans and intentions. What’s more important is what you do right AFTER that setback. Do you berate yourself, give up, self-sabotage? Or, do you decide to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, forgive yourself and do the next best thing. If you choose option #2, you are already taking that important step of not getting back into that vicious cycle.
6. You self-sabotage
Most people focus on their fear of failure. But what if you actually have a fear of success? In fact for many people, their fear is based on feeling unmoored or uncomfortable with success because it may mean they have to truly own that success on a long-term basis. Or maybe the fear is that while you’re successful now, it’s only a matter of time before you fail again. Self-sabotage helps protect you from that fate. But it also prevents you from moving forward and growing. To read more about self-sabotage with food, click here.
7. You’re too emotionally involved in the outcome
If you are so vested and attached to some particular outcome, like weight loss or fitting into a certain dress size by a certain date, your journey to health will be fraughtful and I fear short-lived. When you can remove or divorce yourself from clinging too tightly and emotionally to only one outcome, it allows space to view success in many many different ways, which only breeds more success and momentum. And speaking about success...
8. You equate success with perfection
One of the reasons why you’re not seeing your hard work and success materializing is because you’re only focusing on huge, life-changing wins and not the little wins along the way. If you view success as black-and-white and only when you’re perfect, you miss out on being satisfied and able to look forward to the process of health, not just the end result of it. And, it narrows opportunities to praise yourself every time you practice something that used to be harder for you. If you only praise your efforts when you triumph, it will be hard to forgive yourself when you fail. And spoiler alert: we all fail and have setbacks on our way to becoming skilled at something.
9. Your gut bacteria is begging you for more sugar
Did you know that when you eat sugar and certain processed foods, the types of bacteria that feed on those molecules release chemicals that tell your brain to eat more of it? Yep, your gut microbiome is partly responsible for your food cravings!
So, much like how the dopamine in your brain fires when you eat “junk” food, which signals you to eat more and more, your bacteria are doing the same thing. They are trying to trick you into eating more sugar so they thrive and you don’t. The good news is that by starting to work on balancing your gut health, you can also help reduce cravings, which can sabotage your hard efforts to eat healthier. I use Ixcela’s at-home pinprick test to examine my client’s gut microbiome and create healing meal plans that are specifically customized to your own biochemistry. To learn more about the Ixcela at-home-gut-fitness test and to get a 20% discount, click here and type in the pro code MAJEC2020
To book a free gut-health-assessment-call with me click below.
Remember, learning a new path is hard. Think about anything you have ever learned in your life that used to be difficult for you. How did you get good at it? You had a passion to learn, you practiced every day and you were persistent. Are you willing to and can you apply those same principles to changing your eating habits? If so, you are already ahead of the game.
Your job is to not give up.