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New Year! New you! New diet!
Haven’t we been here before?
Last year. And the year before.
AND the year before that!
Convinced this will be the year we shift all that Christmas excess.
AND actually stick to whichever fancy new diet we’re “doing” this time.
Only to spend next November chucking out from the back of the pantry expired packets of “healthy” stuff we somehow convinced ourselves we would cook.
Sound familiar?
Hmmmm … so what should we do?
Give up now? Not even bother?
Accept the doom of an ever expanding waist and depressingly sluggish feeling?
NO NO NO! Honestly we don’t!
I got the BIG warning from my doctor last year who said I HAD to sort out my diet.
It was really hurting my health.
That was massive motivation to do something
And in the last year I have changed my diet and stuck to it.
AND have seen great results!
So what was the big secret?
Well actually there were THREE!
That a very clever nutritionist friend shared with me just after I saw the doctor.
And they boiled down to this …
- Enjoy first, give up later
- Eat strong, eat happy
- Ditch your recipe books
These 3 tips are far MORE important than which diet you chose. And this is why …
1. Enjoy first – give up later
Nothing tastes as good as temptation!
So when we start our healthy diet by giving up stuff we’ve immediately set ourselves up for failure.
My friend’s big advice was to focus first on filling up with healthy stuff we enjoy.
And spend a whole MONTH turning healthy, yummy eating into a habit.
And ONLY then start to give up the bad stuff.
That’s why I love this super easy detox diet.
It’s ALL about enjoying the good stuff and building gut health FIRST before trying to give up the bad.
2. Eat strong, eat happy
And the BIG reason we need to enjoy first and give up later IS that we’re ALL running on empty.
Despite eating so much, most of us lack super important nutrients.
That give us our strength BOTH physically and mentally.
Without these, we all feel like death warmed up.
So when we try to diet it’s crazy hard NOT to reach for the bad stuff to prop us up.
To stick to a healthy diet we need in that first month to to eat strong and eat happy.
(I’ve got a BIG list of happy food here.)
BEFORE we try to give up all the feel better props.
And that means plenty of iron, magnesium, potassium, vitamin B12, omega 3, anti-oxidants.
And a whole host more essential goodies.
WHICH leads us onto the THIRD secret to making a diet work.
3. Ditch Your Recipe Books
Most of us have shelves full of barely used recipe books.
They look lovely.
BUT we’re too busy. We’re too tired. We’re too confused by them.
Which is why we all reach for snacks, ready meals and take aways.
So as my nutritionist friend said it is CRAZY BONKERS to believe that most of us will ever stick to any diet needing a recipe book.
We need to start our diet with super simple basics HABITS.
A high energy breakfast we can make on auto pilot when we just woke up.
Nutrition rich lunches we can throw together in 5 minutes.
And sleep well suppers we can make from memory.
And that was exactly what I did this year.
Big bowls of porridge with berries and seeds chucked on. Hearty soups whizzed up in 5 minutes in my NutriBullet and crammed full of veg, nuts and pulses. Easy stuff like grilled salmon or tuna on a nutrient packed jacket potato.
Just a few super simple HABITS that filled me up with feel strong – feel happy food.
The inches came off. The cholesterol came down.
My energy came back. And I started smiling. Again.
And all WITHOUT a single DIET book in sight!
If you’re struggling to make your healthy diet stick, I do hope this helps.
I would love to hear how you get on. And what works best for you.
[…] as I’ve shared before here, the minute healthy diets get complicated or worthy, they fail […]