HEALTHY EATING – CREATING CONSISTENCY

Creating healthy eating habits is one of the most important skills you can give yourself for your overall wellbeing — especially if you want to feel your best in your daily life. But creating healthy eating habits that work for you 365 days a year can be challenging.

My philosophy is based on eating an abundance of plant-based, whole foods that keep you satiated, supports digestion, keeps your focus sharp, and energy stabilised. It also includes practicing mindful eating that can help you tune into your body and create a more positive experience with food.

And most importantly, I believe in giving you the skills you need in order to put those two things into practice in your daily life to make healthy eating easy and enjoyable.

After you finish reading this guide, you’ll have a few steps you can practice to make your daily food choices a little easier, more mindful, and more enjoyable.

All of the science in my research pointed to the same thing — eating an abundance of plant-based, whole foods is the simplest and most effective way to nourish your body.

It’s these foods that support your digestion, keep you feeling full, and provide you with stable energy throughout the day.

Knowing what to eat and then actually making that work for your body and lifestyle so you can practice it daily are two different things.

That’s why so many diets, plans, and trends don’t work for the long-term. Because they’re only designed to tell you what to eat. They aren’t designed to help you self-assess, check-in, and adjust that for your own body or make it easy for you to maintain 365 days a year. So, I took some time to reflect and experiment with myself and found the very things that help you actually follow through with your eating habits on a daily basis.

Do you ever feel that the reason you can’t maintain healthy eating habits is that something happens and then all of your healthy eating goes out the door?

— Maybe it’s things like going to happy hour for pizza and drinks with coworkers.

— Or maybe it’s because of your sweet tooth that can’t resist a treat or that you can’t stop snacking on those chips.

— Or maybe it’s because you have a busy schedule and don’t have enough time to cook healthy meals.

— Or maybe it’s because you don’t feel you have a support system to talk to and feel encouraged by.

— Or you’re trying your best to eat well, but your digestion or energy levels are thrown off by it.

Sometimes even when you know what to eat nourish your body, it can be challenging to maintain it when there are so many other factors that play into your eating habits.

Knowing what to eat is only the first step.

If you’re only focused on what you’re eating, it can keep you in the start-and-stop cycle.

This cycle means you’re able to eat well for a certain amount of time, but then you “fall-off-the-bandwagon” whenever something influences your food choices like:

• going out to eat,
• celebrating the holidays,
• feeling really stressed or bored,
• having your regular routine thrown off,
• being “tempted” by a sweet treat a coworker brought to the office,
• getting bored of the same meals every week,
• not having enough time to cook after work.

And the list can go on and on!

I’m sure you can think of one or two things that you’ve experienced that prevented you from sticking with your healthy eating habits.

We’ve all been there, myself included!

So, how do you build eating habits that will stick for the long-term?

In addition to knowing what to eat, you need to know how to eat — the specific mindful eating practices and kitchen skills to be able to maintain them.

These two additional elements are often missing from most nutrition advice but they’re the very things that help us navigate all of the other factors that influence our food choices.

By practicing these things in my own life, I shaped daily eating habits that worked best for me, my body, and my lifestyle.

I’ve been using those habits daily in my life for more than a decade, so I can confidently say that it was those specific elements working together that made the biggest difference in my eating habits and my relationship with food.

When I realized how much my eating habits shifted with this method, I started to apply those in my client sessions as well. And the shifts for them have been even more impactful in their lives, because so many of them had struggled with overeating/under-eating, not being consistent with healthy eating, or having a negative relationship with food for so long. It left them not only feeling less than their best but also caused them to be preoccupied with food and always feeling unsure as to if what they were eating was best for them.

In love & light,

Mariana