How to say no to unhealthy foods.

How to say no to unhealthy foods

Everywhere we go nowadays our environment is absolutely saturated in cheap, crap, unneeded calories. We can’t go shopping without dealing with a constant barrage of advertising for cheap processed and ‘junk' foods. The buy 1 get 1 free!!! Supersize it for an extra 20p!!  These are never for the healthy options. It's so very easy to say ‘yes' to them, though they do us no favours.  It’s amazing when you stop to think about it. How can they produce the food so cheaply? It was food once, so it had to be reared or grown. So somebody had to do that. Then it was picked or slaughtered, transported, processed, packaged, transported again, then sold by someone all for a £1. Mmmmm ????

The problem with eating these foods is that they are nutrient deficient. So your body doesn’t get the vitamins and minerals that it needs. So you end up constantly hungry.  I bet like me you’ve eaten a supersized meal; then an hour later you were hungry again?? You end up eating more and more just to feel satisfied, piling in the calories.

So what does that mean?

So I’ve put together some simple ways to help you say no to temptation.

1. Don’t get too hungry.

If you get too hungry, your gut will send signals to the reward system in your brain. Then you will feel compelled to eat the first thing you see, and lots of it.  How many times have we gone into a shop and bought sweets or chocolate and eaten all of them.  Only to be hungry again 10 minutes later.  If you try to avoid getting too hungry the temptation to gorge won’t be there. There’s a lot to be said for eating regularly. That’s why most diets fail we get too hungry.

2.  Don’t drink your calories.

Far too often we forget that fizzy drinks, sport drinks, energy drinks and sweet drinks are all calorie laden. So in other words we drink these drinks that are high in calories but low in nutritional value…instead of eating. The problem is we will still feel hungry and end up eating anyway. So eat rather than drink, unless it’s water.

3. Find foods that you can eat without struggling.

If you starve between meals, it’s important that if you do snack, you choose something that you can stop eating easily. What I mean is how often is it that we have a biscuit, cake or some crisps for a snack but we can’t stop at one or a few; we end up eating half a packet of biscuits or a family packet of crisps.  If we chose fruit we’d be able to stop and have a snack with more nutritional value.

4. Stop getting stressed.

Eating when stressed is a big no no!!! We always eat when we get stressed, comfort eating. Usually the odd family bar of chocolate, or perhaps a litre of ice cream, or a 12inch deep pan pizza. But when we are stressed, the executive system in the brain that signals us to stop eating isn’t working as it should. Also we haven’t got the energy to stop ourselves eating, so we don’t. So when we’re stressed go for a walk or call a friend for a chat, just do something to distract yourself and try not to eat until you have calmed.  Otherwise we’ll eat the first thing we see.

5. Get more sleep.

It has been found in research that those people who only get a few hours sleep a night tended to put on weight because they ate more as they felt tired more.  As they were tired they tended to eat to get more energy.  It was found that generally they ate more carbohydrates and high fat foods; again the quick fix junk foods.

These are a few simple tips to help you stop eating unhealthy foods. Try not to feel guilty if you eat something unhealthy because that will just lead to you getting stressed and eating more unhealthy foods.  So take it easy and just lower your intake of these foods. Don’t make huge changes as these will be hard to keep up. Slow and steady…

I hope that you find those tips helpful. If you have any questions at all on what I have talked about, definitely reach out to me in the comments of this post and I will get back to you!  I need to go and snack before I get too hungry.