I am not a dietician…
I just love staying healthy.
Strictly scientifically speaking there is a large amount of body-weight regulation our body does for us on its own. The body does consume energy for its basic functions, pumping of blood, digestions, breathing, etc. This means that a large number of calories are consumed by your body and you don’t even know it. If you think about it you need food to process your food. Keeping in consideration the fact that all bodies have the same basic functions, some people have higher metabolic activity, causing them to consume more calories doing the same actions.
Before we start talking about ways to introduce subtle changes in your life to be a little more healthy each day, I want to preface this by saying weight is not a sole measure of health. While there are weight ranges based on a variety of factors, those are simply guidelines created for the average person so as to avoid any other medical conditions. As long as a person is healthy, striving to stay healthy and in the process is happy, that is what matters most. There is a direct connection between the conditions of the body and the mind and they cannot be treated as two separate entities and has been proven on many occasions.
You don’t need to be on a fancy diet to control you weight or eating habits. The number one key to building a healthy relationship with food is being mindful. Just as being mindful can help you with relationships with other people and yourself, it can also help you create a healthier relationship with food. Just by paying more attention to your food, you will be able to make better choices. This could mean something as simple as eating the fruit you were craving the canned juice of or switching to whole wheat bread from white.
Quarantine and the lockdown period has made this next suggestion easier for most. While it is easy to pick up something readymade off the shelf, chances are it will feel much better to your body if you made it yourself. Anything that comes from a packet has things that are not naturally made for your body, not to mention the environmental impact of packaging. While it may take a little longer to make something from scratch, if you can you should probably try. This will also help you gain the satisfaction of knowing exactly what is going in your body.
Many modern eating habits have reduced the intake for fiber and fluids. These are the two substances in your food that will help remove what needs to be out of the body. They are the basis of a healthy digestive system and fast food or fancy diets won’t give you that. I will not discredit diets because they deliver what they claim, weight loss, but some concepts such as cheat meals make no sense to me. There are many connections between routine and better mental health and that is linked to food as well. A cheat meal is a representation of a breakdown of that routine and can be avoided by not cutting typical chat foods out completely, but by finding ways to fit them into a diet that keeps your body happy.
Whatever journey you may be on, weather you are trying to gain weight, maintain your weight or lose weight, look at it a means to sustenance and not the means to an end. Always remember to stay confident and appreciate progress. Keeping your body able and functioning well should be the goal and with that things will fall in place themselves. We often get caught up by people talking about how we look and let that impact how we feel, but the fact of the matter is that they often have nothing better than to do that. You need to be confident in what you want and having healthy insides are a good elevator to that.