Changing your diet one week at a time
Posted by kathryn in Uncategorized
Changing your diet can be hard. Changing your diet means you have to:
- research what foods are healthy
- work out which of those you like
- find ways to cook and eat them
- remember to buy them when you go shopping
- prepare and cook them
- eat them, like them
- and then repeat
It probably seems a whole lot easier to carry on just the way you are.
But you know there’s a problem with that.
Most people I come into contact with want to eat well. They know having a healthy diet is going to benefit them. It’s the right thing to do. They just find it too hard and overwhelming to make the change.
Good intentions can spur you to revolutionise your diet for a couple of weeks. Then work gets busy and your social life picks up. Suddenly you’re back eating take-away and peanut butter jaffles for dinner.
I’m going to propose a new approach. Rather than going for total change. Rather than revolutionising your diet. Why not try changing it one week at a time?
Pick one thing you could do this week. Commit to it and try to do this every day, for seven days.
Once you’ve got this under your belt, pick something else. Make another change.
It’s nowhere near as dramatic as changing everything at once. But it’s much more do-able. You’re more likely to succeed and sustain the changes.
And six months from now your diet would be very different.
What’s the one change your going to make over the next seven days?
13 November, 2007
Comments
And my change? I’ve slipped into having toast for breakfast most days, instead of my usual muesli. More toast means more butter (and therefore saturated fat). Plus I’m missing out on the nuts, dried fruit and general nutritional diversity of muesli.
Therefore this afternoon I’m going to the local shops to get muesli and milk. And have a better breakfast each day.
I’ve actually gone through this process already, but here are some of the “stages of change” that my wife and I went through (largely motivated by this blog!):
Have no more than one four-square ration of chocolate a day (we break up the block when we buy it and put it into a container in the fridge, and the rule is that the container shall not leave the fridge, and you shall not take more than one chunk at a time, on pain of grrrrr);
Ensure that at least 6 dinners a week have at least two servings of vegetables for each of us (those frozen vegetable packs are deadset winners for that);
Reduce the size of servings so that we’re satisfied, not stuffed;
Reducing the proportion of high carb foods (rice and potatoes) in our meals (I never realised lots of rice and potatoes was bad for you!);
Drink water, not soft drinks, during the day;
Regular (3 times a week, minimum) strong exercise session (I walk the 30 minutes each way to and from the train station, and my wife has transformed into a gym junkie);
Fresh fruit, nuts, and yoghurt for snacks instead of chips and biscuits (escaping from an office where the cream bikkies were free and unlimited helped a lot there!).
There’s probably been some other things we’ve done that I’ve forgotten, and they weren’t introduced at regular seven day intervals, but we certainly staged our changes over a period of time. It’s worked really well for me, too — I refuse to weigh myself (as I believe it’s a completely bulls**t way to measure health) but I’ve had at least 5 people who’ve asked “have you lost weight?” or complimented me on how much better I look (they often say “thinner” as well, which irks me a little as someone who firmly believes that thinner != better), and my fitness levels are significantly better, so I figure it’s working for me well enough.
Aaaaah. Brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT Feel The Love. You have no idea how HAPPY that all makes me. So happy that I seem to be “shouting” a bit more than usual.
Excellent changes by both you and the missus. Sounds like you’ve both thought about it, negotiated what’s going to work for you, and then stuck with the plan – making the changes over a period of time.
Feeling better and improving your health, is what it’s all about.
Congratulations to you both.
Very inspiring Feel the Love. As someone who cannot go one day without some chocolate, I find your four square rule fascinating. It’s so easy to take out the whole block and eat mindlessly until I realise almost three rows have gone. I am going to try your rule. I guess the trick here is to eat real slowly and fully savour the taste. I am curious though, surely you have broken the rule, at least once?
I am already into day three of changing a pattern in my life Kathryn and that is to stop eating after 7.30 or 8pm. I have allowed a terrible habit of eating right up until I almost go to bed (sometimes even midnight)! As a result I have been waking up feeling heavy, lethargic and unmotivated. Not to mention a growing tyre around my belly.
And yes eating chocolate has been one of the main culprits.
The past few days I make sure I have my last cuppa and some chokky no later than 8pm and then I turn off the kitchen light to give a “kitchen’s closed” atmosphere. So far so good. This is really big for me as it is a lifelong habit I am attempting to alter. I really hope I can stick to it.
Well done for comitting to making a change Mariana. Simple strategies, like turning off the kitchen light, will help you make this change. Cleaning your teeth early can also be useful – food never tastes the same after toothpaste!
Mariana, you have the power to do this. To make your way of eating YOUR DECISION, rather than just mind-less habits. Be confident you can do this.
And remember, if you fall over one night, it’s not the end of the world. You haven’t spoiled your new plan, you haven’t ruined anything. It’s just a slip-up. The next morning, re-commit to the way you’re trying to eat. And carry on.
this is really interesting. to join the chocolate-fest, i have a pretty good strategy for limiting chocolate intake (and i am a most dedicated chocolate fiend. no really).
firstly, limit yourself to fair trade choc. it’s more expensive so we tend to only buy one 200g block per week as opposed to a 300g block of Cadbury’s or whatever.
secondly, don’t ever eat straight from the block. for a while now my husband and i have been making up dessert plates of fruit, a few nuts, and 2-3 pieces of dark chocolate each. it looks so pretty on a nice plate and is so much more fun to eat than a Mars Bar.
Mariana: “I am curious though, surely you have broken the [chocolate] rule, at least once?”
Yes, I probably have (although I can’t remember exactly when or what the circumstances were). As Kathryn said, though, it wasn’t a case of “damn it, I’ve stuffed up, that’s the end of that”, I just figured “that was a slip-up, let’s not make a habit of it”.
lindsey: “limit yourself to fair trade choc. it’s more expensive so we tend to only buy one 200g block per week”
From experience, I can say just because it’s more expensive doesn’t mean that you won’t sit down with the whole block in front of the telly and… whoops! (Several blocks of Really Expensive Chocolate — not to mention my wallet — learnt that one the hard way!)
Kathryn: “Feeling better and improving your health, is what it’s all about.”
Amen to that.
You’re so encouraging Kathryn! The tip for cleaning teeth early is a great one! Shall definitely do that.
It’s nice to hear that an occasional “slip-up” is OK. Thanx to you to Andrew.
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