What qualities must the habit of healthy eating have for it to work well?

The habit of healthy eating thrives on consistency, embracing variety, balancing nutrients, and listening to the body's cues with clarity. It's not just about restriction, but mindful choices, made each day, fuelling energy, supporting well-being in a sustainable way.

 

It must be pleasant.

For a habit to be effective it has to be what we call healthy: healthy and tasty, because the brain knows that what is rewarded is repeated and what causes punishment is avoided.

It's about turning food into an ally and not an enemy, to improve the relationship you have with food. It is about imitating nature by associating what is pleasurable with what helps us survive, such as food, sex or personal safety. 

Having a healthy diet is about enjoying food. Good taste is an essential part of healthy eating and is necessary for a habit to last over time.

 

Another feature is that it is Easy.

Since humans tend to follow the law of least effort. We have a natural tendency to do what is easiest. The greater the difficulty, we develop a greater tendency to resist. 

 

When I refer to willpower I always say that it ends up tiring, because it is not effective in building a lasting habit. Making things simple consists of simplifying them as necessary, to do a lot with a little. It is about eliminating difficulties and points of resistance.

 

If you want to eat healthy, don't go to dinner with your friends anywhere, choose a restaurant where you can eat healthy. Organize your pantry and your shopping. Organize your way of healthy cooking. So that everything is easier and you have to do fewer things.

 

Find a way to reduce the difficulty to make good habits easier, but increase the difficulty to make bad habits more difficult. Prepare the environment so that the change is easy. Put healthy food closer at hand and unhealthy food in hard-to-reach places.

 

Make healthy food more attractive than junk food.

Our starving ancestors valued, above all, food that gave them a lot of energy, given the high calorie consumption they needed due to their lifestyle. That is why we value food that contains salt, fat and sugar so much, it is a residue of our prehistoric past.

 

Our brain still prefers these types of foods, because our reward circuits remain the same as those of our ancestors. Our brain lacks an updated version of software. We continue to use the same operating system as during the Palaeolithic even though our civilization is very different. 

 

The human brain is overwhelmed by today's world, we have the same tastes for food as a caveman, but our actual calorie needs are much lower. The industry and advertising are directed towards what over stimulates our brain reward circuits, which are very out of date.

 

Multinationals in the food industry dedicate countless resources to studying how we perceive flavours, not only through the sense of taste but also through smell. They also study how qualities such as the food being crunchy, bubbly, combining different textures, or the contrast in colour and texture between its exterior and interior influence us.

 

It is a type of food designed to manipulate our brain, since it seeks to attack our weaknesses by exaggerating the qualities that make the food attractive, to turn its consumption into a habit. Just as they make junk food so attractive, we have to make healthy food much more so.

 

Make us aware of healthy food in our lives.

Since we have automated it in such a way that we are not able to enjoy it, because what refers to eating occurs at an automatic level in our unconscious. 

 

In addition to feeding us, healthy food ensures a good state of physical and psychological health, since food facilitates and makes social relationships more pleasant, supports the industry and farmers who are committed to quality, stimulates sustainable agricultural practices, helps to establish population in rural areas, prevent forest fires, help create employment and make us independent in matters of food, among many other things.

 

These four characteristics are what allow you to identify with your way of eating, so that your habit of eating healthy is permanent. Thus, eating healthy will be part of your identity, because just by eating you will become a completely healthy person. Building the habit of healthy eating is not done through willpower.

 

Conclusions

A restrictive diet is not suitable for forming a habit. The problem with restrictive diets when they become a habit is that they can degenerate into paramecia, which is an eating disorder that I already told you about in my video: Stop paramecia.

 

A well-done dietary treatment will aim to help the person form the habit of eating healthy. The goal of losing weight should be the consequence of healthy eating. Because setting the goal of losing weight and nothing else will make the person not know what to do when they are thin. We will have treated the symptom but not the cause, so it is normal to regain the lost weight.

 

Remember that acquiring healthy habits is much more than an advertising phrase, it is about changing your identity. It is part of a process of personal change, broader than strictly dietary change. It is a change that will make you aware of what your life was like before eating healthy and the consequences it has on your current life. 

 

Eating healthy is becoming an act of rebellion, but a discreet rebellion that consists of ignoring what we are told from the dark side of the food industry. I hope you have learned a lot about how to feed your good habits.

 

I recommend that you view my articles more than once, because they are designed so that each time you do so, you discover something new that had gone unnoticed the previous time. This way, these positive ideas will replace the negative ideas that prevent you from moving forward. These items, well used, are a form of therapy that will be very useful to you.

 

I hope I have helped you promote the habit of healthy eating.