When you’re on a personal quest to get healthy and lose weight, there’s a temptation to get quick results, rather than integrating a healthy diet as an essential part of your daily life. Here are ten traps and pitfalls to look out for when thinking about eating healthy.
Cost of Healthy Eating
One of the primary motivators for eating junk food is cost. It’s no secret that popular fast food chains have much greater market penetration in poorer suburbs. When you can get a bag of take-out for less than a big salad, there’s a big problem.
Therefore, going on a healthy diet after being accustomed to the low cost of junk food can be a financial burden.
Peer Pressure and Eating Healthy
Once you’re eating healthy, it can be difficult to stick to your new diet plan. You’ll find yourself out socializing with friends, family or colleagues and you will be tempted to break your diet by indulging in a pizza, beers, or perhaps some other low health food.
Maintaining a healthy diet may require you to re-think your social environment.
Do You Have Support?
It can be tough to make a dramatic change in your lifestyle. In fact, it’s why most people fail to make healthy eating part of their essential daily routine.
That’s why getting support from family and friends is beneficial. It will help maintain your motivation if a friend or family member is also eating healthy right along with you, but even if they’re not; their continued support will serve you well and take out the anxiety of change until healthy eating becomes a habit.
Not Losing Enough Weight and Feeling Discouraged
So, you’ve been eating a healthy diet for a little while and have been weighing yourself regularly. The problem is that the pounds just aren’t falling off as quickly as you’d like them to!
Your friends are losing more weight than you, and you’re feel discouraged by their success. It’s a common feeling, but it’s wise to remember that everyone is different, and everyone loses weight differently and at different rates.
Using Fad Diets
When we think healthy eating, we often think of diet plans like Weight Watchers. However, eating healthy is different to these sorts of programs. Remember, fad diets and popular diet regimes are in it to make a profit.
You don’t need to subscribe to one of these diet plans to eat healthy and remain healthy. A balanced and nutritious diet is vital. Look out for fad diets that are claiming some magical cure for obesity or a quick fix, which can cause health problems themselves, including:
- Tiredness and weakness
- Nausea
- Headaches
- Insufficient intake or vitamins and minerals
Starving Yourself of Calories
Sometimes when you think you’re eating healthy, you’re actually just starving your body of the nutrients it needs. You might think munching on carrot sticks all day is fine, but your body needs a certain number of calories daily to function optimally, the key is to create a calorie deficit so you burn more than you eat every day.
Don’t get trapped by the ‘less is more’ premise.
Are You Getting What You Really Need?
Just when you think you’re eating healthy food, you end up feeling drained and tired. One trap that many people fall into on healthy diets is mistaking a healthy diet for a diet of minimization.
Just as you can starve yourself of calories, you might simply indulge in too many of the same types of healthy food.
Eat too many veggies poor in iron and you’ll definitely need some iron in your diet lest you feel unwell. Eat too much fiber and you might find yourself a little backed up, the opposite of what you’d expect! A healthy diet requires constant monitoring that you are eating right, not eating less.
Are Saturated Fats Really Bad?
One of the pitfalls of healthy living is that sometimes it is hard to know what or who to believe.
There was a time when we ate butter without fear, and then Margarine came along before we discovered that it was something of a health risk. In recent decades, we have been told to fear saturated fats but studies have concluded no link between saturated fats and heart disease.
Soy and Skim Milk
When we eat healthy, we often add popular weight loss products to the mix like skim milk, low fat cheeses, and soy. But did you know that skim milk contains oxidized cholesterol, which is bad for you?
Drinking it regularly also means that your body will crave natural healthy fats and sugars to top up on the fats that are missing from your skim milk.
Obsessions
Once we’re eating healthy, there’s a tendency in some people to obsess over the little things and blow them out of proportion. One might become obsessed with counting caloric intake, reading food labels or even watching what other people eat. There’s a risk that this sort of behavior can become unhealthy and stressful if you let it dominate your thinking. Just remember: part of healthy eating is healthy thinking.