Think bigger picture – if all these wonderful diets worked then why is the world getting fatter?

It’s not your fault if you are confused about nutrition. I know nutritionists who even get sucked into the hype about some new ‘fad’ thing to do with nutrition. The media are very good at portraying one side of the story. And then you have ‘influencers’ often paid a large amount of money to promote some new nutrition fad just to suck you in and take your money.

Losing weight is not easy. Keeping it off is even harder. But that’s why we set up this site – to teach you how to improve your health forever. Not for 3 months or 6 months when you hit your goal weight and then go back to how you used to eat. But forever.

Another reason diets fail is they don’t teach you to make permanent changes to your diet. Changes that you can live with for the rest of your life. Because if you want to live a healthy life for a long time, that’s what you need to do. Eat well. Forever. That doesn’t mean you can’t have chocolate, or McDonalds, or KFC or whatever it is you can’t live without. It just means you can’t have it every day. Not if you want to live well. For a long time. People are living longer. That’s a fact. But are they living longer as healthy individuals or are they living longer with disease and lots of pills?

Wouldn’t you rather live long and be healthy so you can do the things you want to do when you are retired? If you have 20 years of retirement and you are sick…think about that. What are you going to do for 20 years stuck in a chair because of a stroke, or heart attack, or diabetes…those things are all preventable with good nutrition and exercise.
If you are still reading this blog – yay! So, you must be interested in improving your health long-term.

The best recommendation I can make towards improving your health (and that’s about maintaining a healthy weight, eating well and exercising daily) is to do one thing at a time.

That’s another reason diets fail. They try to get you to change everything at once. It’s too hard! Far better to work on one thing at a time. Choose one thing you can start with. Like swapping a snack for something healthier – you might eat a cookie for a snack – try swapping it for a piece of fruit. Easy. Just one thing. Do that for a few weeks until it becomes a habit. Then swap something else.

The biggest message I want to get across is – do one thing at a time! Once it becomes easy and a habit, then move onto the next thing. This is a really good way to try and change bad habits for good ones and to do it permanently. Remember, the weight didn’t arrive overnight. It might have taken 10 or 20 years to get to where you are now. Why would you think it will come off overnight? Or in a week? Or a month? That’s another problem. People want instant results. That’s unrealistic. Another reason diets’ fail. They might give you fast weight loss in the beginning, but they don’t teach you how to change your habits forever. Which is why the weight goes back on – and usually more.

You do need to do a bit of work to keep the weight off. You need to educate yourself on what’s in your food. And really, you need to learn to read food labels. If you can’t be bothered – eat mostly plant-based foods! At least you will be getting lots of vitamins, minerals and adequate carbohydrates and protein. If your diet is made up of mostly plant-based foods, it will naturally be low in fat (particularly saturated fat). There’s lots of other reading you can do to educate yourself (on this site). And that’s the point – to teach everyone who is reading this how to live a long, healthier life through making good food choices.

If you are interested in improving your health for the long term, and never want to go on another ‘diet’ ever again, think about subscribing to The Food Cruncher – for all things nutrition. No fads. Only evidence-based nutrition information. Thanks for reading.

Michelle @ The Food Cruncher.