7 steps for making changes that last

Step I: Addition
Positive eating is a gradual process. Compare it to learning how to walk, first you crawl, then pull yourself up, learn to balance and then take your first steps. After that, there’s no stopping you. This same slow process needs to be implemented for an effective and permanent change. Instead of eliminating the bad, first, add the good. Most modern diets leave you overfed but undernourished. They allow us the leeway to satisfy our sweet tooth, eat junk food and refined food.
Adding healthy food leaves you both feeling full and well-nourished as well. Steadily adding positive foods is far easier than eliminating unhealthy foods in one shot.

Step II: Replacement
Everywhere we go we are enticed with treats like pizza, ice-cream, colas and fast food. They are easy addictions, which can act as a barrier when you want to turn over a new leaf and start healthy eating. To avoid giving into these cravings, try replacing your food. Ordering greasy pizza over the phone can be replaced with a whole grain pizza; ice-cream replaced with a fruit yoghurt or one with stevia. To gradually eliminate unhealthy foods, begin replacing food items with more wholesome substitutes which leave you feeling satisfied and content.

Step III: 10 Point Reduction
Use a scale of 1 to 10 to measure your cravings, 10 being the highest craving to resist. Try to keep lowering your cravings as only that will enable you to have more control over them. Craving chocolate? Try a date instead. The act of eating and chewing something equally sweet could also help with satiation to a degree. It will help a craving as high as 10 to come down to 6 or 7. The similarity between the chocolate and the date introduces a gradual reduction in craving intensity, with nearly equal satiation.

Step IV: Vacation Foods
It takes years to undo poor eating habits entirely, thus making habit-forming a longer process. It is important to identify ‘treats’, ‘cravings’, and ‘binges’ and differentiate them from each other.

This step helps to deal with an occasional ‘treat’ day without guilt or worry. Plan a day’s meal in which you can consume your favourite foods in tiny portions, ensuring that you keep your cravings in check, without feeling deprived. These short-term goals are good motivators as you will wait for these days to eat your junk food instead of eating it regularly and you will ultimately discipline yourself. You will be able to drop some of your bad eating habits as your body will soon realise that you are able to function completely fine without them.

Step V: Food Dress-Up
Most commonly, a mention of healthy foods puts the image of bland, tasteless foods in your mind – reminding you why you avoid them.

Our taste buds rely on the added spices and condiments to our food to give us the flavourful cuisine experience, which dulls our taste buds to the natural good taste possessed in organic food. An easy solution to make the food palatable you should dress it up.

A simple breakfast of upma can be monotonous, whereas topping it off with cashews, sunflower seeds or chopped chillies it will improve the taste.

This long-range goal of dressing up meals with healthy alternatives, proper nutrition can be achieved more realistically than by simply eliminating or giving up unhealthy foods altogether.

It also makes it more ‘fun’ to be involved in the process of preparing your food with condiments and additions you like.

Step VI: Stay Full
This is the simplest step to understand but difficult to implement. Everyone knows that the reason obesity is so prevalent and that is because we mindlessly eat at irregular intervals. Our body kicks into craving mode when we let our hunger peak. Planning and consuming regular, healthy meals will leave you satisfied for longer, maintaining a proper balance of nutrition.

Step VII: Multiple Feedings
This step goes hand in hand with ‘Step Six’. Smaller, lighter, healthier meals should be consumed throughout the day to avoid the intense hunger wrongly associated with weight loss. You should maintain a graze-not-gorge mentality as your body is equipped to process small amounts of food every few hours than huge meals hours apart. Eating lots at one time makes your digestion sluggish and increases fat storage. It also slows down metabolism making it harder to burn calories.