What Should You do When You can’t Stop Eating Junk food?
Here are six lifestyle changes you need to adopt today.
We all know about healthy eating, this diet and that diet. We know about the benefits of home cooked, local and organic food. The nutritional information on the back of packaged foods includes details about all the bloody sugar and excessive salt, but we eat anyway. We eat because there is no other alternative. Today, most couples are working. Either visiting chefs cook their meals or they cook themselves between work appointments (yes, during WFH). Even visiting chefs are not there all day and we have snacks to eat too. But how much would we want to cook while on the phone? The bare minimum. To get us through the afternoon or a few hours.
For example, a rice with some tadka or tempering without curry or dal, or a paratha with a pickle.
Turmeric is the magic ingredient for all such people. It turns the food yellow and makes it seem like a complete, nutritious meal. But it is a yellow illusion.
The irony is that we can make money, lots of money, but we can't eat nutritious food. It's just not available.
Cooking doesn't always help either. I agree with the feminists, men should cook. There is a change. Most of my male friends can do more than simple cooking. They can survive, and the ones who never tried and depended on their mothers, wives, or sisters learned during WFH. But can couples cook every morning, every evening, and every night? It's not practical. We have to rely on outside food.
Nowadays, money can buy huge houses, long and exciting trips, excursions, Himalayan journeys, but not nutritious food.
How Can We Get out of This Mess? We should find a balance between nutritious food and not so healthy food, and embrace new way of living. Here are six lifestyle changes we need to adopt today
- Exercise.
It is vital as the air we breathe. Even if we eat healthy, we need to exercise. Imagine how much we should do if we eat unhealthy. The body can only absorb proteins, vitamins, minerals if the energy that is taken in through food is used. When we talk about the non-digital and non-covid era, people moved their bodies a lot, but it doesn’t stand now. Embracing technology is the need of the hour, but we should balance our entire lifestyle to embrace it perfectly.
2) Know Your Limit.
We should know our limits whether we eat healthy or unhealthy foods. Eating too much of anything, healthy or unhealthy, is bad. As a rule of thumb, if you wish to eat one extra chapati or spoonful of rice, imagine if you can eat one more to this extra chapati. If your belly says that eating two breads or chapatis will be excessive , then don’t even take that one chapati or spoonful of rice.
3) Watch Out for Unhealthy Foods.
Be aware of what is healthy and unhealthy. Many people don’t know or have doubts about what falls under healthy and unhealthy foods. And I know those tempting food photos we see on the internet. A good photo does not mean that it is a healthy food. Such food bloggers and professional photographers click photos. With all due respect to such professionals, these photos are meant for presentations. The key step here is awareness. You don’t have to make anything up, just talk to the crazy friends or the slim aunts who don’t even touch cakes or roll their eyes when they pass through a sweet shop. Listen carefully to their 2 cents and take what works for you. If you don’t know such people, read books. This is the easiest and most convenient way. Any book from Rujuta Diwekar is a good starting point to analyze your Indian food diet.
4) Limit eating of unhealthy foods.
Since we know we can’t eat nutritious food all the time, let’s try to allow as few unhealthy meals as possible in a week. Some examples where we can allow ourselves with an unhealthy meal-
The party-dinner at office that you can’t miss, samosas as an evening snack that you have to take because you have no other option at the office, countless teas because you don’t have time to cook at home, cold sandwich on the plane because you want to follow the crowd and don’t carry a home-cooked meal.
Plan your meals and allow yourself as few unhealthy meals as possible. Track your count. This way you will know when you are crossing the line into unhealthy eating.
5) Learn to cook.
This is a life skill we should all master. Our jobs don't give us the nutritious food, they give us the resources to learn and cook nutritious food. Spending money to learn cooking is a good investment. We should realize that this is the only way out when there are so many unhealthy tempting and tongue licking foods out there.
6) Embrace Local Foods.
Embrace local foods and spices and don't rely on foods that come to your kitchens from far away. The industry adds preservatives to foods to extend their life. Stay away from foods which have a shelf life of more than 3 to 4 months.
A Simple Rule: Foods with a certain shelf life are optimally good.
In the end, can we really afford healthy food? Yes, with an optimal balance, because we are dependent on outside foods that are not always fresh or local. The unhealthy food industry shapes and influences our lives to a great extent. Being aware of it and finding a balance is the only way out.
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