Forget Dieting If You Want to Be Healthy in Midlife

They say that we are what we eat.

Healthy eating is probably the most beneficial habit we can adopt in midlife to give ourselves the best chances for longevity and to maximize the quality of life in general.

The Vicious Circle of Dieting

Imagine that your goal is becoming healthier. You go online, do your research and quickly find out that nutrition is one of the most essential elements of a healthy life.

As you research nutrition, chances are that you will end up reviewing countless diets designed to lose weight. 

By that time, your attention, and possibly your goal, have gradually shifted from achieving health to just losing weight. 

It’s not the same thing!

Sure, being overweight is not good and losing weight is beneficial, but this shouldn’t be your primary objective.

Achieving, and maintaining an optimal weight for life should be a side-effect of healthy, everyday eating habits – NOT your primary goal.

There are hundreds of diets out there that you can follow and lose weight. Some are more effective, some offer quick results, some are easier to follow, some suit our tastes and habits better. 

If you stick to any of them, you will most probably lose weight. 

However, as soon as you stop and gradually go back to your old eating habits, you return to your previous weight and often exceed it. This happens because your body weight is constantly adjusting to what you are eating. 

At the same time, your metabolism is also adjusting accordingly. 

It seems that some diets slow down the body metabolism and therefore when you stop the diet and go back to your previous eating routine, you may even end up with more weight than before starting it.

And then, after a while, you will do the next diet to lose the extra weight, and the next and so on. 

You will be in the vicious cycle of dieting for weight loss with no success, but even worst -getting further away from your primary goal, achieving good health.

The Virtuous Circle of Healthy Eating

Healthy eating is about giving yourself the necessary nutrients to thrive and enjoy life to the fullest.

It is about conditioning our body to function at its full potential. To achieve that, we have to allow our body to do its job.

The problem for most of us today is that following the typical western diet with lots of highly processed foods and eating all day long, we have hijacked our body’s ability to function optimally.

The body does not send the right signals to our brain for ‘when,’ ‘what’ and ‘how much’ to eat. 

Our body is out of balance.

Eating healthy will allow you to restore the ability to listen to the signals of your body. 

You will be able to know when to eat, stop eating when full, and make the best food choices according to your body needs.

This should be a progressive, step by step process.

Introducing changes gradually is more viable, making sure you first add the healthy stuff on your plate to leave less space for the items you want to minimize.

Eating healthy can be difficult in the beginning, as food will feel tasteless and bland, since our taste buds have been used to highly processed foods, usually with lots of simple carbs and sugar combined with unhealthy fats.

As you take the first steps towards well-being, and make small improvements in your eating habits, you will soon notice that you feel better, but most importantly, you will start  “listening” to your body. 

This may take some time, depending on your past habits and what is your starting point, but it will come.

The change will be subtle in the beginning, but more evident as time passes and you introduce more good habits.

Very soon, you will discover the great tastes and smells of food options that once seemed bland and boring. 

Healthy food choices will be your default mode, and you will never consider going back to your old eating habits. 

You Will Be Free from Dieting!