We all listen to a lot of advice about what to eat and what NOT to eat. We know that healthy eating can prevent cancers, heart disease and diabetes, and prolong lives. Yet when a delicious piece of cake or sweet or samosa is in front of us, not many of us can stop ourselves from eating it. When we are stressed or unhappy, our “willpower” to control our urge to eat chips while watching TV is lowest. And with time we give in to our urges and find ourselves helpless before these urges. We blame ourselves to be unable to control unhealthy urges.

Psychologists now tell us that it would be too much to ask our brains to always be “working hard”, most of our daily activities are automatic so that our brains have enough energy for lot of “intellectual” work it does. Instead of bothering our brains to spend energy on controlling eating urges, lets make its work easy by not presenting it with too many “triggers”.

We have to do some work first to become aware of what nudges us personally towards overeating. For me it’s the visuals on TV-e.g. I was watching someone enjoying bread and butter with coffee, and went to the kitchen and put some butter on a bread slice to eat.

I ate two extra servings of pulao (automatically) while engrossed in dinner conversations. Later I realised I should not have kept the whole pulao bowl on the table. Noting these triggers and recording whatever we are eating is a good way to become aware of these nudges and use that information to design your environment.

In essence what I am saying that we may want to eat more “mindfully” but its better to manipulate the environment and eat healthy “mindlessly”. The Desired action should be Default action, that should be the easiest thing to do. So I am trying to put some points here which might help with that..

1. Meal planning-I stick my weekly menus to the refrigerator using fridge magnets. This will also help plan what to buy for the week
2. Always shop for groceries using a list. Do not go to a grocery store/shop online when you are hungry.
3. Re-designing your kitchen-
   1. using smaller plates. 
   2. Keeping fruits on the table
   3. Cookies/namkeen or other unhealthy foods either don’t buy at all, or keep them at the back of the shelf where its difficult to reach
4. At the dinner table
   1. Always eat at the table, avoid watching TV or phone while eating
   2. “Stove-To-Plate” Serve directly on the plate or bowl, instead of keeping serving bowls on the table for second serving
   3. Eat slowly,start with water and salad. These are ways to reduce your immediate hunger.
   4. Maybe I should add, this is also an opportunity to connect with your loved ones.
   5. “Mindful eating” is a new concept which originates from mindfulness meditation techniques. Although doing it diligently needs patience, but the idea of gratitude for the food we eat, and being aware of the taste, smell texture of what we are eating can be practised not just for eating more healthy but to use it as an opportunity to slow down our pace, enjoy the present more and learn to enjoy our foods like we are eating it for the first time.

If we make better choices 80% of the time, we may let ourselves indulge and relax our brains by maybe eating a dessert 20% of the time. We do not need to be perfect.

Why are we discussing healthy eating. Well I talk to so many women and also men of course who want to lose weight. Many of us do not “like” our current selves, some dislike it to such an extent that the self loathing voice disturbs their sleep. That starts a very unhealthy cycle of not sleeping well, less energy for exercise and further depletion of willpower, poorer healthy choices…it becomes a vicious never ending cycle.

Healthy eating starts with self love, we want to eat healthy because we love ourselves and want ourselves to be happy and healthy for a long long time. And we can be healthy AND beautiful at all sizes.

Healthy eating is about loving yourselves, moving around more, and staying connected to family and friends who love you the way you are.