Transition from Unhealthy To Healthy Eating

Should our lives really be ruled by what we eat?
Come to think of it, eating too much of junk food is unhealthy, and surprisingly, so is the obsession of eating healthy taken to an extreme. Let's together find the diet middle ground.

Eating Unhealthy
You are eating unhealthy if you're struggling with any of the following habits

• Eating too few meals during the day: This means usually skipping breakfast to eventually fight or give in to overpowering temptation to binge at the end of day. The idea of a sensible diet literally goes down the drain.
• No knowledge of Calorie or Fat value: You may think you are eating less, and there is no fathomable reason for your expanding waistline. That's ignorance. It's the calorie count that matters. You could be eating unhealthy by consuming twice the amount of calories than you really should.
• Eating Junk Food: You pick up a chip pack, and you're likely to put it down empty. A handful of chips always leaves you craving for more.
  

What is wrong with eating "too" healthy
As a people, we have become obsessed with Health.  There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. There's lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.

I'm sure you did not know this: when diet becomes a fixation, it can have debilitating effects on a person's mental health. Following any diet plan too rigidly is bound to have negative consequences, such as

• Following a fanatical "one-way" diet. Loss in intuitive eating and a loss in taking pleasure in food
• Planning of social life according to diet plan, avoiding restaurants and declining to lunch or dine with friends and relatives, just to be able to "eat right"

Transition to normal eating
Normal eating is all about flexibility. It is simply knowing what food you want, how hungry you are, finding your food choices pleasurable and knowing when to stop.

Ten Unhealthy Eating habits to AVOID

• Caffeine addiction. OK, I confess, I was guilty of this at one point also. It affects the functioning of important vital organs such as our heart, kidneys, and adrenals.
• Eating only fruits and vegetables is really foolish! It means eating only fibrous carbs and simple sugars and depriving yourself of necessary protein, fats, and complex carbohydrates.
• Restricting yourself to one meal a day. Not only are you deprived of nutrients, but once you start eating more meals, you will put on weight because your metabolism has quit.
• Avoiding meat completely. Instead, eat red meat or chicken, fish etc in moderation.
• Aspartame, excess of which can result in headaches, mental confusion, blindness, seizures and even death.
• Living on salads. Salads alone will not fill you up, nor will it keep the weight off.
• Swapping real meals for supplements. Bad idea! How can you hope to get the same nutrition from supplements that you get from food?
• Never eating breakfast. That slows down metabolism, the body loses muscle tone and becomes flabby.
• Skipping meals to eat more later. Skipping meals only slows the metabolism down. Skip a meal and you set yourself back a day. Skip 4 meals and you are behind a half week.
• Counting calories and fat grams everytime before you eat. The point is to eat just enough. if you are wasting time calculating fat grams and every little calorie ingested, DON'T! Just be sensible about it.

Eating is an experience, not an energy-consuming daily obsession
It's important to indulge in fun food experiences. Enjoy a succulent piece of chicken with your eyes closed, feel the crunch of chips in your mouth, enjoy the feel of mango juice running down your wrist, and savor a hearty breakfast in bed. It will improve your understanding of food, your relationship with food, leading to a better self-image. Do not make eating healthy the end and all of your life. Try to eat a well-balanced diet as just one facet of your healthy lifestyle.