How to Change Your Eating Habits
Some time we eat in such a thoughtless, haphazard way that you can’t remember what you ate or where and when you ate it. Worry, fear, tension and depression can cause you to eat too much or too often. Boredom drives you to eat more than you want or need. On other side if you live on snacks all day, then you are kidding yourself that you have hardly eaten a thing. It is important to eat three meals a day, however small and unconventional. You can have snacks too, but do plan them. If you sample food while you are cooking, limit yourself to a specific amount like two or three teaspoons full per dish. Leftovers should go straight into soup, the freezer, the fridge or the bin. Aim to eat sensibly and set times. If particular foods are a problem because you can’t eat them in small quantities, keep them out of the house, or at least out of sight. In time you should be able to desensitize yourself to them.
Find what prompts you to eat then learn to break the link with food. It may be a feeling. The ones to track down are those that turn you to food – anxiety, hurt, depression, anger, boredom or excitement. Ban eating for at least an hour after the next bout of anxiety, hurt or whatever. Fight boredom with activity. Reading or television helps in this matter. Relieve stress and anxiety with exercise or relaxation if you are anxious, find out why you feel so.
In restaurants learn to order salad dishes and skip courses, though if you do succumb to the chocolate mousse don’t give up altogether. At parties fend off friends who press rich foods and second helpings. Organize a wholesome snack for teatime. Allow yourself treats and try not to distinguish between ‘dieting me’ and ‘non-dieting me’. Unless you know which foods are fat-packed or over-sugared and high in calories, you may choose the wrong ones. Many people think cheese and sausages are protein and therefore ‘good’, without realizing that the protein comes with a great deal of fat. Aim to improve your knowledge of food values.
The overweight often bypass breakfast, leave out lunch or eat lightly at midday and concentrate their eating on the evening meal. The drawbacks to this are both physiological and psychological. It is bad for their heart, their willpower and their weight. Far better to follow the old adage: ‘breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper’.
If less than three meals a day are eaten, cholesterol levels in the blood show a tendency to rise. Research has shown that the person who eats three meals a day is less likely to put on fat than the person who eats the same number of calories at a single sitting, especially in the evening. By missing breakfast, you are avoiding food at a time when self-control is high (in the morning and early afternoon) and eating more when resistance is lowest (in the evening). When the time for dinner comes, the body is famished and control goes by the board. And overweight people rarely stop at dinner. The leisure activities are also likely to culminate in eating, and this regular refueling may continue unabated until bed time.
