Sometimes when you talk about health food, people get all crazy, and tell you in no uncertain terms, “I don’t want to be a health food nut!” It usually goes along with, “I want to enjoy my food!”
Well, you don’t have to be a health food nut to eat healthy, or at least healthier. And there’s no reason you can’t enjoy your food. Eating sticks and twigs isn’t necessary. If you enjoy stuff like Grape Nuts, more power to you. If you don’t, well, there’s other healthy stuff to eat that WILL taste good to you.
Change A Little or Change A Lot – Your Call!
When it comes to what you eat, every time you make a healthy food choice, that’s a plus. While some people have what I call a ‘conversion experience’ with health food and instantly clean out every offending food from their pantries and their diet, other people just aren’t comfortable with that. They need to make it a more gradual process, changing their diet a bite at a time.
That’s okay. You really don’t have to be a health food nut.
Now that being said, the healthier your diet is, the better off you’ll be. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can eat one healthy meal, or make two or three good food choices a day, and then eat junk food the rest of the day and that’s healthy. Be realistic.
But if you can’t live without a Twinkie now and then, fine. Just be aware of what you’re eating. You know it’s not a healthy food choice. Try to make a lot more food choices that ARE healthy than those that aren’t.
Health Food or Not Health Food? That’s Not The Question!
It’s doesn’t have to be a case of all or nothing. Sure if you can make an immediate change to eating nothing but healthy foods, that’s super. But sometimes there’s a learning curve to know what foods to eat. And it can be very difficult sometimes to find the right food choices, especially when eating out somewhere.
Just start thinking more about what you’re eating, and try to make healthier choices. By just being aware of what you’re putting in your mouth, you’re making a step in the right direction. Be open to trying different foods. You may discover some of the so-called “health foods” actually taste pretty good.
So if the idea of being a health food nut makes you shudder, don’t give up on a healthy diet altogether, just make smaller changes. It’s better to make gradual improvements in your diet than to make NO changes.
Eat a better diet. It’s good for your health.
But you don’t have to be a health food nut.
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So much of our eating is habit, so any sort of change needs to be a conscious decision. Sometimes we just don’t realise how things mount up – we’ve had workmen in for the past two weeks renovating our bathroom, both take sugar in their drinks. We ended up buying a new pack of sugar as the amount they’ve ended up consuming is colossal!
So if they just stopped adding sugar to their drinks they could make a big difference (they’ve make a good job of the bathroom so haven’t complained about the sugar!!)
You had to buy a new packet of sugar! LoL! Keep filling their cups with tea and lots of sugar to keep them happy whilst they’re finishing your bathroom. Then, as a “thank you”, print out this article and give it to them.
Sugar is a terrible habit. I’m constantly looking for ways to put a dent in my sugar intake. I’ve tried all sorts of things – some worked, some didn’t.
One that’s working right now is to use apple sauce in place of sugar – on pancakes instead of syrup or in recipes for brownies, for instance.
I’ll never cut sugar out of my life completely, but I have made small changes that have made big differences. Consume less sugar and stay young from the inside out!
That IS pretty funny, your having to buy more sugar to keep the workmen happy. Hey, if I had someone working on my bathroom, I wouldn’t complain about how much sugar they consumed either, ha, ha!
And besides, “preaching health food” doesn’t really work. Most people know they need to eat better, but THEY have to be the ones to want to change.
Hi Teagan, small choices really can add up. Something I find myself doing is heading for the fruit bowl instead of the cupboard for crackers or a granola bar when I want a snack. Fruit really is natures fast food. (veggies ready in the fridge is another great one)
After a short while the fruit tastes far better than any processed crap (as I like to call it – in fact the salt in it becomes distasteful after you’re off it for awhile).
If one doesn’t seem enough, I have two! Or more. If I’m feeling indulgent, I whip up a fruit salad for a treat with vanilla yogurt as a topping, yumm! A sliced banana is as sweet as any cookie – makes any fruit salad a treat. Watermelon and cantaloupe are great too. Clementine’s and even apples. So much to choose from!
It all started for me with making the choice first and asking – is this good for my body or not? Then I can eat guilt free. Less garbage too and compost for the garden!
I’ve found the same thing with both sugar and salt. Once I’ve eaten the healtheir stuff for a while, I’ll confess to seeing something that was once a favorite, and “OH that looks good; I’ll just have a taste.” But the sugar or salt is so excessive, it doesn’t taste good any more.
I like to mix fruit yougurt and cottage cheese. Combined there’s more substance than just yougurt alone, and more flavor than plain old cottage cheese.
It just seems wit more people eating healthy and more people caring about what they eat, there are just a lot more choices. The choices make it easier and more enjoyable, this is a field that has come a long way..
I agree. A lot of stuff that used to be for “health food nuts only” is now available in the mainstream, and more coming all the time. Just look in the cereal aisle for instance, and many places have steel cut oats, or cereals without sugar.
Of course, the down side to all this is you still have to read labels, because just because a food is hyped as healthy don’t make it so! These companies can be pretty sneaky about how foods are labeled to make them seem more healthy than they really are.
Hi,
Did I miss your twitter button? Your articles would be perfect for my blog carnival that I publish on Sundays. Would you like to choose one to be featured. Take a look at the one I published today (Sunday) and then let me know, ok? I would print it in its entirety or else just a link whichever you prefer.
A huge change I made was to give up fast food. Not allowing myself to stop at McD’s meant I had to rearrange my life so that I had food at home and time to eat it before I left. Time planning and food shopping! Change has to be structured in or else it won’t stick. You have excellent information on this blog
Cheryl… I didn’t have a twitter button, but since you mentioned it… I do now!
And you are quite welcome to use one of my posts on your blog carnival.
You’ve hit the nail on the head… eating well requires planning, and sometimes we just don’t take the time to do it! I know that’s when I mess up the most. In a hurry and eat junk instead of healthy stuff. 3 lashes with a wet noodle then endeavor to do better!
That’s funny, I used to be one of those “I don’t wanna be a health nut”, however now that I have a daughter, I watch what we eat now, but I have found that eating healthier isn’t that hard and the food actually has flavor and tasted better than processed stuff. We take the time to not eat GMO foods and high fructose corn syrup foods. If we must eat sugar we eat organic sugar and not corn syrup.
Oh yeah, kids will make you stop and think about what you’re doing! They watch everything we do, even if we don’t think so, and are such great imitators. I totally agree with you that avoiding GMO foods and high fructose corn syrup foods is important. Sometimes you’ve really got to scrutinize labels though on foods that have any processing!
Hey there,
This is critical information!
It seems too many people view diet as an ‘all or nothing’ endeavor. Either I follow it perfectly… or I’m off completely!
That has never worked for me (at least not for long periods of time).
Currently, I do my best to eat variety, and keep the high sugar stuff to a minimum.
My diet is not much more sophisticated than that… but it works better for me than any of the ‘strict’ diets I have attempted to follow!
keep smiling,
Ben
Hey Ben!
I think you are not alone! In fact, one of the biggest reasons I started this blog was I felt like too many people were being pushed into the “all or nothing” approach, so just did nothing!
Well, it’s great if a person eats nothing but healthy food, but it’s a pretty drastic approach for a lot of people which discourages them from trying to eat healthy at all.
And sometimes, after eating more healthy stuff, people want to eat even more healthy stuff… so it builds up to a healthier and healthier diet…. which they never would have started if they felt like they had to do all or nothing right off the bat!
Hi,
I think it is the process foods we need to watch out for. All the stuff that comes in a box. What ever happened to cooking some macroni and adding a little milk and velveta cheese to it and your good to go. Mac and cheese
When it comes to sugar, salt,etc. It is a matter of how much you eat. Anything needs to be done in moderation. Just like a glass of wine or a beer is good for your, but if you keep drinking it is not good for you.
to me the key to eating healthy is go as natural as possible and eat in moderation. My husband was on this diet, but really it wasn’t a diet, it was eating in moderation and eating natural. He lost 50 pounds in 4 months and his weight is staying down.
You are so right when it comes to small changes at a time. that is the key.
Thanks,Debbie
Debbie, I agree that processed foods are the biggest problems, although I’d have to put Velveeta cheese right in there with processed foods, since it’s a “processed cheese spread”.
Sounds like your husband did an excellent switch in changing his eating habits, and instead of a strict diet (which very few people can stay on for very long), made changes he could live with. Smart!
Hi -
I think your food choices depend a lot on your upbringing.
We were pretty poor when growing up and my Mom said she could not waste money on anything but good food.
Lots of vegetables and split pea and lentil soup. Still love them.
We never had sugar except in a birthday cake. Only fruit for dessert.
And I did not know there was white bread until after I was ten.
I still only can eat whole wheat bread. Other bread tastes icky to me.
Confession: My one passion is ice cream which I have about once a week. And as long as I am eating it – I choose only the best and most fattening. Otherwise, it is a waste of time.
I’d certainly agree with you that a lot of our food choices are influenced by our upbringing. Which is one major worry with kids today… what are they eating?
And, well, don’t tell anyone… but I’ll confess to a weakness for ice cream too. But I think we all have some indulgence we just do NOT want to give up. It’s when all our diet is one big indulgence we run into trouble, ha!
PS
My kids only will eat whole wheat bread too!
White bread reminds me of cotton or something.. it’s too squishy. And no flavor.
Amen!
I’m not a healthy nut, but a healthy eater.
It’s all about making small changes because you are better able to sustain success.
Making dramatic changes means that you will quit dramatically rapidly.
This is an excellent post!
Krizia
Krizia, considering the subject of your blog, I am especially thrilled to hear you consider this to be a good post.
I try to be a healthy eater. But I may still be a little nutty (I try to tell my family I’m just ECCENTRIC, not nuts!
)
Well I’ve never been accused of being a health nut. But do often get strange stares when I ask where the meat has come from (I prefer to only eat organic grass fed beef). I’ve been steadily improving my diets for a long while but very recently it’s taken a better turn and I honestly feel healthy for it. But I’m still a sinner too!
Oh yeah, it’s not common yet for people to wonder where the meat they are eating came from, but I think that’s changing. More people are becoming aware of the hormones that might be in the meat, and that the antibiotics given routinely to animals is a problem also.
I also feel better when I eat healthy food. It makes a huge difference with the fibromyalgia/ chronic fatigue symptoms I have. If I backslide too much in my diet, I pay the price!
but an occasional lapse… well, no one’s perfect, right?
I’ve got some friends who did the radical change thing…that’s not for me. I’m doing better with adding one food or recipe in at a time.
Had a super cool moment at lunch last week. My younger boys (age 7) noticed me eating a baked sweet potato. Then they noticed that I’d put a little brown sugar on the top. I’ve eaten sweet potatoes for the past few months off and on, and no one ever wanted to try it-even though they love my sweet potato casserole.
Wouldn’t you know it? I didn’t get to eat much of the sweet potato because I had two little boys announcing how much of my lunch they were going to eat!
I like those little victories.
Amy, that’s really neat with your boys wanting to eat your baked sweet potato. Kids really do notice what we are doing, and sooner or later usually want to try to do (eat) the same thing. Guess next time you’ll have to make extra baked sweet potatoes! Cool, huh?
Some people can do what your friends did and make that radical change. In fact, they seem to thrive on it and do better than way. But there’s a whole lot of people who do NOT, and those small changes work better for us!
Great blog and post. I think healthy food has a hard time making it ‘against’ unhealthy food, also because it’s peanuts – pun intended – when compared to the mega-billions business of unhealthy (packaged, processed) food. There’s no money in you being healthy. But there is lots in you being unwell. The ethics of food pushers are those of the tobacco companies which, burnt by anti-tobacco legislation, have simply left their risky old business of tobacco for the new and unassailable market place of food. After all, smoking was an option, but eating cannot be outlawed. Philip Morris, renamed Altria, in 1988 purchased Kraft Foods, the world’s second largest food conglomerate. They now push food as they used to push cigarettes in the old days. The goal is not to expand your health, but to expand your appetite for their product. You’ll get acid reflux (best case scenario), but that’s okay – your doctor has a nicely colored pill for whatever it might be, just as long as you consume more of what got you sick in the first place. Once sentiment shifts in food as it has in tobacco, and healthy food becomes synonymous with big profits, the crusade for healthy food will get serious traction at last. Until then, statements of “Rabbit food? – I don’t eat rabbit food!” will remain popular, and it is up to people like you to popularize healthy food in our lives, our communities and on our blogs. The good thing, the first one to benefit from healthy food is yourself, so you can never do worse than win! Not a bad deal, and I wish you lots and lots of home runs.
Oh you are sooooooo right. The advertising dollars are with the processed foods, and the research dollars too. Finding that right combination of fat, sweet & salt that people just love to eat! The taste is hard to resist! Sell it to them so they think it’s healthy for them! All this healthy food we’re eating, and yet Americans as a whole have never been more obese! What’s with that?
And the money is in you being unwell… oh there’s another one of my soapboxes. Not only putting all those chemicals in your body with the food you eat, but all the different chemical pills given for every symptom out there. How many medications have been recalled because there were dangerous side effects? How many really do the job well they’re supposed to do? (My favorite is the ad for another antidepressant to help when your first antidepressant isn’t doing the job and you still have symptoms.)
And before someone reads this and gets all excited I think taking medicine is wrong… no, but I DO think we are over medicated. It’s a whole lot easier to take a pill than eat healthy and exercise so we don’t get sick in the first place.
Anyway! thanks for your comment. I too hope for lots of home runs and that people will think more and more about what they put in their bodies! (You are what you eat!)
Hi,
I agree with them, we shouldn’t be the health nuts but the healthy eaters who should live a healthy life – and it’s all about how we discipline ourselves to eat the right thing and eat the right way although I admit I’ve been through getting a little junkie then eating healthy the next day or so just to fulfill the taste buds.
But, after I made myself more concerned with how my body works, it seems that you really can go to this point where you’ll have to care for your body the more you used to because you’ll want to enjoy life even longer especially with your loved ones around.
Stay healthy!
Hey Tyrone. Yes, if you think about how your body works, then you think more about how you are fueling your body. It’s really easy to eat junk food, but it’s like putting gas with sugar in it in a vehicle. Sooner or later it’s going to cause problems.
So let’s all try to stay healthy!
I go in and out of being a ‘health nut’. Right now I’m into Sugar… Ah…
Me bad. but I know that I’m getting back out of it by making one small choice at a time.
When my husbands children used to come visit us in Colorado we told them that white bread didn’t exist here, only wheat. It was years before they figured it out…:)
Sugar is addictive! I find the more I eat, the more I want. But once I wean myself off of it, then something really sweet tastes strange to me. It’s all what we’re used to, isn’t it?
I love that bit about white bread doesn’t exist in Colorado. Too funny.
Hi there,
You’re spot on with excellent info everywhere on your blog.
One interesing reminder for me is that here in Bulgaria most people are very thin. This was originally because they couldnot affford to buy anything in a box. How can you on the equivalent of 300 dollars a month? But I notice the young are now getting fatter. This is a product of fast convenience foods such as crisps and burgers. These are a product of disoisable income and big advertising spending. Typically most people used to preserve their own snacks (all organic because they cant afford chemicals) peppers , peas , beans, mushrooms– many as tasty winter snack foods.
With an ethos of not having waste (from hard communist era times) you realise you can make you own. Fir example we make up museli cheaper and more tasty than bought ones. Taking food back to its raw state is good philosophy. I now even make my own fruit juice mix most mornings – a little effort, but so worth it in terms of taste.
Lance, that’s really interesting about people in Bulgaria being thin. I read an article just the other day about people in the depression era here in the U.S…. that poor people were thin because they couldn’t afford a lot of food. But that in today’s society poor people are more often overweight because they can buy junk and/or fast foods. One researcher decided to see how many calories of certain foods you could purchase for a dollar at grocery stores in the U.S.
So sometimes poor people are buying the wrong food because it’s what is cheap!
But I think you have a point with making your own. It’s cheaper and better for you to take the basic ingredients and make your own than buy already made stuff.
Thanks for the comment!
I think there is another approach to eat healthy, instead of approaching it by eating what’s healthy, pick the food from what you like which are healthier. It will become so much more fun. I’m sure everybody likes food which are good for them.
Okay Tom, I agree with you… picking foods you like that are healthy is a good approach. But isn’t it just another way of saying your going to eat healthy foods?
My diet has been weighing heavily on me since I became pregnant. I know what I need to do, but with cravings and sickness, it hasn’t been easy. I love your advice – small changes. I think I can do that!
Oh Keller, being pregnant is sure a big way to make you think about what you’re eating since you’re eating for two! And I know it’s really difficult when you aren’t feeling well to think about eating the right stuff. I wish you well in making small changes and finding healthier choices!!! Best wishes for a healthy baby!
I have to watch what I eat due to the massive amount of miles I put on the bike every week…but I’m not entirely careful either.
I really did do your “small changes” advice as trying to change everything at once becomes a shock to the system of sorts. That said…I’ll never give up ice cream!
Well Robb, we seem to have a consensus here… no one wants to give up on that ice cream!
With all the exercise you get, I’m sure you’re burning those calories off. It’s just a matter of looking for more healthy sources of calories most of the time. (See, I said “Most”… that leaves room for ice cream once in a while, ha, ha!)
What a great message — small changes can lead to big things. I am always overwhelmed by diet choices and eating — I tend to go for the big, life altering changes and fail. I bet a few small changes would do me a world of good!
Sometimes we set ourselves up for failure, trying to do more than we are ready for. Some people can change their diet overnight, but I think most people aren’t quite ready for that. Good luck on making some small changes for the better!
Teagan, great article and spot-on suggestion.
I agree with Corinne. It has a lot to do with how you were raised. We were poor growing up, so we almost never ate out, let alone ate fast food. In the 60′s, fast food wasn’t on every corner anyway.
I ate healthier growing up than I eat now, although I try very hard. We had a garden in the back yard with a wide variety to choose from. We didn’t go to the store for veggies, we went out back and picked them fresh for dinner. My grandparents also had a garden in the back yard, and always had one from the time they married. WWII required most everyone to have a victory garden because of strict rationing. They never stopped planting the garden every year. At the end of summer we canned or froze what was left and ate that all winter.
I really miss a salad, a veggie and fruit at dinner, but without the garden it’s hard to plan ahead and buy enough to have it all on hand. Keeping fresh food fresh is the hard part. We either have a salad or a veggie, and I always keep lots of fruit in the fridge.
When I worked in the chemical industry, cooking was harder to fit in. We ate more processed food and we ate out more. But now that I’m a teacher, I have more time and a lot less money, so we don’t eat out but maybe once a month. We don’t drink much soda either. It’s expensive, fattening and bad for your teeth. Around here there are water, coffee, tea, and milk. The sweetener is sugar-free. We use very little sugar. I’m hypoglycemic and can’t tolerate much of it.
My son likes a lot of fruits and veggies, but I get bored with his favorites because my favorites are everything except cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. He loves most kinds of beans, and being in the south, we eat beans and rice at least once a week. I love beans and rice and would eat them even if we were millionaires.
The only sweets we eat are baked at home or ice cream. Ice cream has lots of milk fat and protein as well as less sugar than most anything else that is processed. Baking at home keeps a lot of high fructose corn syrup out of your baked goods. Recipes call for cane sugar.
3/4 of a cup of ice cream is equal to one serving of milk, and I was thrilled to find out when I was pregnant ice cream and pudding made with milk are servings of milk. Ice cream calmed my stomach down when I was morning sick. Breakfast was often boiled noodles and ice cream. Don’t laugh. When you’re trying to get something to stay down and settle every day you do what you have to do. Lunch and dinner were much healthier because I tended to be sick in the morning. Hang in there, Keller, being sick usually clears up by week 14 or 15. Try home-popped popcorn, not the stuff you microwave in a bag. It works better than crackers for some people.
Sherri
Boiled noodles and ice cream is certainly an interesting breakfast, but I won’t laugh! I had trouble with morning sickness most of the time I was pregnant with both my boys, so I remember what it was like trying to find *something* that would settle my stomach!
It appears the consensus continues that most people have ice cream as the one thing they do NOT want to see disappearing from their diet!
Thanks for the great comments.
It’s either I’m a health nut or eating poorly.. hard for me to stay in the middle.. after my Cancun trip I’ve been doing more of the latter.. lol.. but will get back to my healthy ways soon