The Importance of forming a healthy eating habit

Life is all about compromises, right? Well, if you think you can ignore your bad eating habits just because you exercise regularly, think again. A mistake that many people make is thinking that if you burn off a ton of calories at the gym you can eat whatever you want. Or, if you’re “naturally” thin you don’t have to watch what you eat. Unfortunately, trading an hour in the gym for a greasy double cheeseburger or relying on a good metabolism to take the place of healthy eating habits completely misses the point of living a healthy lifestyle…

Eating a healthy diet is far from simple, simply because humans are very complex beings. We may have it in the back of our minds that we are eating to fuel our bodies, but we actually make the majority of our food choices based on their enjoyment factor. In fact, eating is such an enjoyable experience that we often choose to eat foods that taste very good, but that don’t make us feel very good afterward. We also enjoy these foods so much that we eat more than our bodies actually need, which in turn makes us fat, unhappy and depressed. Many people do not even know how great it feels to eat a healthy meal, because they have been making bad food choices for too long. If this sounds all too familiar to you, let’s answer some basic questions about why it’s so important to eat healthy:

Why Should I Make Healthy Food Choices?

To truly understand the importance of establishing healthy eating habits, you need to ask yourself a very simple question: “Why do humans need to eat?” (Note the use of the word “need,” not “want.”) Simply put, humans need to eat to supply their bodies with nutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals) that then supply the body with fuel for energy, aid in tissue growth and repair, act in various biochemical reactions, and much, much more. The basic need for food is pretty simple and could be compared to putting gas in your car. If you put the right fuel into your car, it will spring to life with a single turn of the key and run smoothly for many years, but if you put soda pop and sugar in your gas tank, it’s going to ruin your car. In this sense, your car and your body are very much alike. They both run well on the right kind of fuel, but will deteriorate over time if you neglect their basic fueling needs.

Why Should I Strive for a Healthy Lifestyle?

It’s a lot of work to eat healthy; it takes discipline and isn’t always fun, so why bother? At some point in your life, you will be faced with the realization that the health of your body is the determining factor for what kind of lifestyle you can lead. Just like a smoker faces a possible future of emphysema and lung cancer, if you neglect healthy eating habits you not only face a possible future of being overweight or obese, you also run the risk of depression, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, bowel complications and much more. The choices you make each day – from what to eat for breakfast to whether or not to have that extra slice of pie – affect how you feel and how you perform, which as you may be able to guess, affects everything you do. Choose wisely, and you will soon find that feeding your body well translates into a longer, healthier, more enjoyable life.

Once you decide that learning healthy eating habits is worthwhile for you, it’s time to make some changes to your diet. Challenge yourself to come up with some new healthy eating habits every day and put them to good use, like drinking more water or using mustard on your sandwiches instead of mayo. Instead of trying to cut out all the “bad” foods you currently eat, like any processed foods, sweets, soda, candy, and other junk food, it’s much easier and safer to start by adding more healthy foods to your diet, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, low-fat dairy products, nuts, and legumes. This way, you will slowly be replacing your bad diet with a good diet and won’t be left with a huge, gaping void where your bad foods once were. As you start filling up on healthier foods, you’ll have an easier time letting go of some of your most coveted unhealthy foods.