Trying to find a healthy diet for the new year? Diets are very common during the new year with the desire to make more healthy choices. We may see headlines about how to lose 15 pounds quickly or see online friends sharing their new diet. But, how do we know which ones are healthy or not? While the desire the make changes is good, we want to be careful to make helpful (not harmful) ones. What does healthy eating look like? Here are some helpful and healthy tips to try for 2023.
Stop Moralizing Food
Labeling food as good or bad and making decisions based on these rules is called moralizing language. Moralizing language around food is something we have all probably heard in at least some capacity. Some examples include:
- Choosing to eat or not eat something that is considered good or bad. (“I can’t eat that, it’s bad.”)
- Choosing to not have certain “bad” junk foods in the house because then we will eat it all.
- Choosing to continue eating certain food because you already “messed up” for the day or week.
- Choosing to eat a salad or other “good” food to undue how “bad” we were earlier in the day/week.
Moralizing food creates a toxic relationship with food and inhibits us from honoring our body’s natural signals and desires. It can limit our ability to make food choices based on preferences and practicality and instead forces us to make decisions based on mental rules. This creates a cycle of shame around eating habits where we feel guilt anytime we “fail” and eat “bad” food. This can lead us to make plans to try harder next time. Eventually falling into a cycle of excessive restriction followed by shame-filled binges.
Removing the moralizing language around food gives us a sense of freedom around eating. Food should be labeled as food – not an item that determines our worth. Removing moralizing language doesn’t mean that we ignore the nutritional differences between food items. Instead, it frees us from making decisions based on rules or a sense of morality. It frees us from attaching our sense of worth and value to what we eat and allows us to choose what to eat by taking into account our hunger, what sounds satisfying, and how well that food will give us energy for our daily tasks or support our health.
This year, try removing judgment from food and replacing it with a neutral approach. Practice giving yourself permission to eat anything without guilt. Adopt a positive approach to food choice that focuses on how the food tastes, energizes you, satisfies, and fuels. Replace thoughts and beliefs that moralize food such as “I need to exercise enough in order to earn this food” to neutral language such as “Food is not something to be earned. I’m worthy of food regardless of what I do.” We do not need to rely on food rules in order to healthfully nourish our bodies. In fact, letting go of food rules and finding balance in what we eat is what a healthy diet entails. This leads to greater improvement in our mental and physical health as it supports sustainable habits.
Reject the Diet Mentality
Many of us have made a new year’s resolution at some point to lose that stubborn fat or get fit. We spend time planning and prepping for a drastic change claiming this year will be the year that we succeed. We might decide on a 6-week meal plan to kick start our change or choose a challenge such as 75-Hard. But what many of these plans often fail to provide are sustainable long-term outcomes.
It’s no wonder these diets draw us in. The media frequently tells us that to see a difference or improve our lives, we need to make drastic changes. Not only can we see progress without having to make drastic changes, but making such large sweeping adjustments can lead to fatigue and burnout as we put our bodies in a high-stress environment. Furthermore, many of these diets also encourage moralizing of food and fitness which encourages the development of eating habits that can be unhealthy or even dangerous.
And once we have achieved our desired outcome, maintaining the change is often left to us to figure out. Frequently falling back into old habits that bring us back to where we started. These diets aim to be a quick-fix solution with no goals for forming sustainable or healthy habits. This can be dangerous to our physical and mental health not to mention our relationship with food.
This year, focus on rejecting the diet mentality and instead opt for forming sustainable habits. By making small healthful changes to our eating habits over the year, we can meet our goals in a way that will ensure they last. Choosing to engage in building permanent healthy diet habits will leave us feeling energized instead of burnt out. Though it may take slightly longer to achieve our goals, the progress we make will not only be sustainable but will better support our long-term physical and mental health.
Be Inclusive, Not Exclusive
Not only do many diets tout fast results, but they often include excessive restriction of calories or specific food groups. Diets that call for strict rules that aim to eliminate and/or completely restrict certain foods in the name of health or for fast results can be harmful more than they are helpful. Strict exclusionary diets such as the carnivore diet, whole-30, or even keto can increase our chances of developing unhealthy behaviors such as restricting/bingeing, negative self-talk, moralizing of food, and large weight fluctuations (think yo-yo dieting). This is due to the focus these diets have on short-term solutions, shame-based choices, and strict food rules.
Furthermore, exclusionary diets can leave us open to experiencing a host of different problems. When we eliminate entire food groups such as carbohydrates, grains, or fruits, or restrict what types of fruits or vegetables we can eat, we are limiting our ability to get all the essential nutrients we need. This leaves us open to under-nourishing ourselves. This leads to problems like vitamin and mineral deficiencies, digestive problems (think constipation, bloating, and gassiness), fatigue, moodiness/irritability, and brain fog to name a few things. We also know that the body absorbs nutrients best when we are eating a variety of different foods.
The best results come from eating foods not in isolation, but from foods eaten together.
Lastly, research has shown that our minds don’t like to be told what we can’t do. When we focus on elimination, we typically end up craving the very items we don’t want to eat. This can lead to shame-filled binges. Instead, focusing on incorporating foods we know are healthy such as whole grains, fruits, and non-starchy vegetables will better help us balance our diets and achieve our goals. A great resource for this is MyPlate.
This year, let’s try focusing on incorporating more healthful foods into our diet instead of eliminating items. Try swapping out statements such as “I can’t eat chips” for “I’m going to pack a fruit as a snack in case I get hungry”. What more healthy things can you add to your diet?
Practice Mindful Eating
Mindful eating is an approach to food that involves bringing awareness to our present thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations when eating. Read more about mindful eating here and 5 simple strategies to practice. Mindful eating involves learning to pay attention to external cues such as the smell, taste, touch, sound, and sight of our food when eating. It also involves learning to recognize our internal cues (emotions, feelings, and thoughts) toward food.
Mindful eating can help us be present in the eating experience and engage in more healthy eating habits. Research has found that those who engage in mindful eating are better able to recognize when they are full, engage less in emotional and binge eating, have better blood sugar control, experience less fluctuation in their weight, and have an overall general positive attitude towards their bodies. Mindful eating is one way to support a healthy diet. Ways we can practice mindful eating include:
- Replacing critical judgements around previous food habits with compassion
- Replacing guilt about overindulging with compassion and nonjudgement
- Slowing down the meal period
- Putting away distractions (book, phone, TV, etc.)
- Acknowledging smells, look, and taste of our food
- Allowing our stomachs to settle before getting seconds
- Learning to recognize signals of hunger and fullness
- Acknowledging that we do not need to finish our plate
Conclusion
In conclusion, having a healthy diet doesn’t need to include drastic changes, exclusionary diets, or shame-based thinking. Healthful eating can instead be filled with compassionate and mindful behaviors focused on building long-term sustainable habits. This year, opt to reject the traditional focus on extreme diets and swap it for healthful habits centered around balance, mindfulness, and a positive relationship with food.
This post is for educational purposes only. If you are interested in making long-term sustainable changes this new year and would like help, seeking out a registered dietitian (RD or RDN) is a great option. A registered dietitian can work with you in making changes that reach your long-term goals and also take into account your lifestyle, food preferences, and personal health needs.
Leave a Reply