How to improve your eating habits. How to change eating behavior

So, let's summarize. For successful weight loss it is necessary to change eating behavior, in other words, eating habits. For this we:

· buy the right products

· creating a daily meal plan

Overweight and obesity are gradually becoming a global problem of mankind. There is less physical movement in a person's life, and more and more tasty and affordable food. From a means of satisfying the physiological needs of the body, food has become the main source of pleasure and enjoyment. We will talk about proper eating behavior, how to get rid of excess weight without diets.

What is "eating behavior"

First of all, let's understand the concept "eating behavior". From a scientific point of view, this a set of actions and reactions of a particular individual to certain foods. For example, consider the feeding behavior of animals that are very selective about food sources. Animals choose food according to their needs: a cat will always crave protein food, while a bird will look for seeds and berries.

In humans, natural eating behavior is usually disturbed. This is due to the abundance of readily available high-carbohydrate foods. As soon as the level of glucose in the blood falls, a person experiences hunger and all his thoughts rush to satisfy the need.

The fastest way to get energy is from sugar - a fast carbohydrate, so the body's craving for sweets is sometimes simply irresistible. However, glucose is absorbed very quickly and the blood sugar level drops sharply again, causing a new bout of hunger. A vicious circle is formed, which is quite difficult to break.

Frequent and uncontrolled food does not have time to digest and is deposited in the form of fat reserves. Depending on the characteristics of the body, overeating leads to excess weight, diabetes, diseases of the teeth, bones, joints, blood vessels, circulatory system, hearts and more.

Reasons for being overweight

Disturbed eating behavior is one of the main causes of excess weight. It turns out that by restoring the correct and healthy eating behavior, you can not only lose weight, but also improve your health. It would seem that everything is so simple, but why are only a few successful, and the number of people suffering from excess weight is only growing?

Failure comes from the wrong approach to problem solving. We begin to deal with the consequences without understanding the cause. Strict diets end in failures, the lost kilograms return, bringing with them gastritis, neurosis and other body disorders. Before taking measures to get rid of excess weight, we investigate the causes of eating disorders.

Hypodynamia

With a decrease in motor activity, the body decides that it does not really need muscles, and therefore it makes no sense to spend energy on them. Muscle mass burns out and much less nutrients are required, but in life it turns out the opposite - sitting still, we are looking for additional sources of pleasure and eat even more. As a result, with a decrease in the needs of the body, the intake of proteins, fats and carbohydrates increases, which leads to excess weight.

Fast food

Lack of time, high rhythms of life overshadow the mode of eating. Fast food systems offer an instant solution to the problem in the form of high-calorie, high-fat snacks. Yes, they put calorie information on the package, but who cares?

Binge eating

Flavor enhancers, an abundance of easily accessible and high-calorie foods lead to an increase in appetite and overeating.

jamming problems

In moments of stress, we often reach for the refrigerator, which almost instantly brings a sense of satisfaction. Such “jamming” sometimes helps to cope with depression, but they carry a real threat to the figure and health.

Fatty food

Almost all tasty and unhealthy foods contain a large number of fats. fatty food are not only fried foods, but also chocolate, cookies, pastries, cheeses, sausages. An excess of fat leads to an excess of calories, but does not give a feeling of satiety.

Lack of food culture

Eating on the run, snacking in front of the TV, at the computer, distract the brain and disrupt natural process saturation. As a result, the body does not get satisfaction from food, although it consumes a large amount of food.

Simple steps, no need to complicate anything

In solving any problem, the right approach and a consistent plan of action are important. In order not to drive yourself into a rigid framework, you should completely reconsider your attitude to food and gradually form the correct eating behavior.
This is not easy to do, especially considering external factors. Stress, habits, tempting affordable delicacies will always be present in life and will not disappear anywhere. Therefore, you need to change your perception of food, cultivating a healthy attitude towards life. The reward for new behavior will be a healthy slim figure, full of energy and strength.

Try gradually, step by step, to introduce new habits into your daily life. Do not try to change everything at once - the body will perceive such a turn of events with hostility and will definitely demand that everything be returned to its place. Choose 1 item from the list and follow it for a week. Then, when the new habit takes root a little, you can start mastering the next one.

Do not rush to drive yourself into a rigid framework. Indeed, after a plentiful diet, even small changes will give good results without compromising metabolism.

Practical guide

Find your weaknesses. Analyze your diet, pay attention to the mistakes that you make. Now that you know the causes of excess weight, think about how you can eliminate them. You don't need to do anything yet, just write down the errors on one side of the sheet, and the ways to correct them on the other.

Hypodynamia - daily walks, refusal of stairs, exercise.
Fast food - healthy snacks and meals from home, etc.

Thus, you will form your own methods of dealing with excess weight. Write what you can embody, what your body agrees to, otherwise it will remain a plan on paper.

Set a specific time for eating. Knowing that a full meal awaits you in an hour, it is much easier to refuse the temptation in the form of a cake. Fix 5 meals at a certain time, adjusting to your family's daily routine. Set the table for breakfast, lunch and dinner, learn to enjoy food. You may eat a little extra at dinner, but you will know for sure that this was the last meal for today.

Start writing down what you eat. Buy a small notepad or use the notepad on your phone and just record. In the evening or in the morning, analyze, draw conclusions. You don't even need a scale or calorie counting here - the extra cookie speaks for itself.

Replace unhealthy foods with healthy ones. Make a list of the unhealthy foods you eat regularly and try to find alternatives to them. For example, instead of mayonnaise, you can use low-fat sour cream or yogurt, replace sugar with sweetener and honey, and white bread with whole grain pastries. Gradually try to replace products, learn how to cook healthy sauces, bake pies and cookies. Only 1 product per week, take your time, over time you will get excited and enjoy the process.

Drink water. A lot has been said about the benefits of clean water for the body, but not everyone drinks the prescribed 1.5 liters. Meanwhile, by regularly drinking water, you will eat less and learn to distinguish hunger from thirst, which in itself is very useful.

Healthy drinks. A huge number of empty calories bring us sugary drinks, juices, alcohol. Learn to enjoy simple pure water, tea without sugar, herbal decoctions. Look for natural sweeteners based on stevia, which will reduce the calorie content of coffee and tea without depriving you of the usual sweet taste. Start collecting a collection of fruit teas, learn how to brew herbal teas.

1 vegetable dish per day. Vegetables are rich in fiber and vitamins, their regular consumption has a positive effect on the waist and on health. Try to include at least one vegetable dish per day in your diet. Make it a rule to cook salads or stew vegetables daily.

Healthy snacks. Get in the habit of having 2 snacks a day. Fruits, nuts, seeds, natural dairy products - these ingredients do not require cooking, are healthy and are just as easily available as cookies and candies. Buying dried fruits for tea instead of chocolate, you become one step closer to health.

Breakfast. The first meal sets the tone for the whole day. Find the right breakfast options for you and your family. It can be not only oatmeal, but also healthy, omelettes, pancakes, cottage cheese casseroles, cereals, cookies.

Please note: breakfast, 2 snacks, 1 vegetable dish - at this stage, your diet has already become more than half useful.

Desserts. Perhaps this is one of the most insidious categories of food. It is very difficult to refuse sweets, so it is better to go around. Try new, easy desserts like jellies, yogurt puddings, homemade ice cream, whole wheat butter-free pastries, and more. Low-calorie desserts can be prepared daily and consumed without risk to the figure.

New dishes. Take up a hobby - healthy cooking. Look for healthy, low-calorie, low-fat recipes. Cook one new dish a week, experiment, update your diet.

Food culture. Gradually, you will begin to understand the topic of healthy eating, feel the positive and negative sides of various products. Do not keep information in yourself, tell your children, your husband about the new properties of familiar food, about calories, proteins, vitamins - about everything that you know yourself. Do not prove anything, do not force, just bring the information to the goal and set an example. You will be surprised when you see interest in the eyes of loved ones.

Don't be afraid of breakdowns. If you are late for work, this does not mean that you need to quit now. So in nutrition - do not be afraid of breakdowns - you are a person and you can break the rules. Let today you eat cake, don't be afraid, enjoy the food, because tomorrow will be another day and another meal.

Following our advice, you can lose weight, restore health and forget about strict diets and excess weight forever.

There is a belief that the main reason for overeating is food abundance. But studies show that it is a matter of discomfort from food restrictions, a person’s fear of hunger, a shortage of food resources.Diet is a system of rules-restrictions, the violation of which causes severe frustration and guilt, which causes a psychological effect, called by scientists from Toronto, the effect of "what the hell!"

Why Diets Don't Work

As soon as one of the rules is violated, a feeling is formed that the entire limiting system collapses, and overeating begins. For example, when a person tried a forbidden food, when the corridor of a given calorie content was exceeded, when a person thinks that he violated or ate something forbidden, although this is not so.

At the very beginning of the diet, it is relatively easy to abstain from prohibited foods. At this point, the primary psychological effect of the diet is formed. A person feels good, he controls everything, because he refuses “bad” food and behaves “correctly”. But control gradually weakens, it becomes more and more difficult to hold on, a person breaks down. Feelings of guilt and the “what the hell” effect appear, leading to overeating. Day by day you feel worse, and because of the violation of the rules, the feeling of guilt increases. Fluctuations of these swings, constant transitions from restrictions to overeating and vice versa. Familiar?

What to do?

The only way to break this vicious cycle is to allow yourself to eat whatever you want. Yes, this idea seems intimidating to almost any adept of modern culture, in which nutrition must be relentlessly “monitored”. But it is this nutrition model that will allow you to get rid of bouts of overeating for good.

Svetlana Bronnikova's book Intuitive Eating, where I got this information from, is a really useful book for people with eating disorders. She will be curious and those who do not suffer from nutritional problems. Read it carefully and thoughtfully, complete the suggested tests. I want to focus on the fact that it is difficult to become an intuitive eater without knowing anything about products, their composition and benefits. Therefore, talk to a nutritionist, read articles on the topic.

In the meantime, here are a few exercises to help you get started on improving your eating behavior:

• Keep a food diary. Yes, difficult, dreary, boring, but very informative! When you eat something, make notes in front of what you eat: “eat when tired”, “eat because you are away”, “eat out of boredom”, “eat in a state of anger, irritation”, “to drown out emotions”, “eat when you are sad”, etc. This way you can analyze what are the main reasons that make you eat when you are not hungry.

• Before you start eating, do breathing exercises designed to soothe nervous system: inhale for 5 counts, exhale. Repeat at least 5 times.

• Print out the hunger scale(you can take it from Bronnikova's book, there is a visual scale) and hang it in the place where you spend the most time. Mark the moments when there is no bodily hunger, but you still want to have a snack.

These exercises are simple but very important. Their results will show exactly what you need to work with: not to fight food, not to try to overcome overeating, but to learn how to deal differently with boredom, irritation, anger. Learn to say “no” to other people and take care of yourself.

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What do you think will make you feel better?
A tablespoon of butter or 300 grams of green beans?
The question “how do you understand that you are full?” is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Otherwise, we would not have heard such answers as: the food on the plate (or on the table, as an option) is over, it is difficult to breathe, there is heaviness in the stomach, I want to sit in a chair and relax, my eyes close, the belt presses ...

These are the softest answers. We do not give here other words like nausea. In these answers lies the essence of not satisfying hunger and not even saturation. The subtext is real overeating, in other words, oversaturation.

Feeling of satiety and satisfaction of hunger. What is the difference?

In a world of endless bustle, we stopped paying attention to the signs of saturation. This is facilitated by eating on the run, and the constant lack of time, and eating with a magazine or in front of the TV ... In this regard, the habit of eating to satiety seems quite natural.

Along with this, in many cultures, satisfying hunger is welcomed instead of the usual saturation.

The Japanese use a saying attributed to Confucius: "hara hachi bu". The essence of this part of the philosophy of eating is that you need to eat until your hunger is completely satisfied.

The Germans and the British are familiar with the saying "Tie up the bag before it is full to the brim" since childhood. If your stomach is full, you overeat.

The Prophet Muhammad said: "A full belly contains a third of food, a third of water, a third of air."

The French give a capacious understanding of the difference between satisfying hunger and saturation. At the beginning of the meal: "J'ai faim" - "I am hungry", and after eating it is customary to say not "I am full", but "I have no more hunger" - "Je N'ai plus faim". That is, “eat not to your full, but to satisfy your hunger.”

And, of course, everyone knows the parental saying of all times and peoples: get up from the table with a feeling of slight malnutrition.

Below we recall a simple rule. In the meantime, experiment. At home, wait for the feeling of hunger and start eating. After eating a few spoonfuls of food, take a break from eating, do something exciting and return to the table in 15 minutes. Most likely, an easy satisfaction of hunger will already come.

And now the rule. Saturation occurs only 20 minutes after the start of a meal. In this regard, it is perfectly justified to eat slowly. At least 2 times a day, take yourself 15-20 minutes to eat. And you will enjoy the process of eating, its taste, and most importantly, you will satisfy your hunger with a small amount of food.

So, instead of satiety, satisfy your hunger.

Eating with the eyes or belly? Simple rules of eating behavior in a restaurant

This is probably a sad story, but most people determine the upcoming degree of saturation, guided by external, usually visual signs: plate size, serving size, number of slices of bread. And when you're hungry, the portion size increases quite naturally. And since from childhood many are accustomed to the fact that food cannot be thrown away, then everything has to be eaten up. Especially in a restaurant: food costs money, and a lot of it. Therefore, I will eat everything so that it is not offensive.

The restaurant is simple and easy to apply in everyday life.

1. Come to the restaurant not very hungry. This is quite realistic if you eat every 4 hours.

2. If this is a corporate dinner or something like that, then shortly before arriving at the restaurant, eat something light. In this case, you will not pounce on food and will be a pleasant conversationalist.

3. Before studying the menu, listen to your desires: what would you like to eat? What do you want to taste?

4. Listen exactly to your desires, and do not ask the waiter: “What do you recommend?” First, the taste and color .... And how can you trust a complete stranger with your taste? Secondly, our society, unfortunately, has not yet reached the level of "participation" in customers. For this reason, you will be offered one of the most expensive dishes.

5. Move away from the prevailing stereotypes: appetizer - salad - hot - dessert. Choose what you want today. Ask the waiter what the salad portion is if this data is not indicated on the menu. If the weight of the salad is indicated, pay close attention to this. In many foreign restaurants, salad portions are quite large, and you can order one salad for two. When placing an order, think not about how you will start eating, but how you will satisfy your hunger. Perhaps one hot meal is enough for you, without salad and appetizers. And when the waiter removes the plates, he will definitely ask “Dessert?” Refer to feelings. If the feeling of hunger persists, order something light. Generally speaking, you don't have to eat dessert.

6. Studying the menu, pay attention to dressing for salads. Give preference to salads dressed with olive oil and lemon juice or balsamic rather than mayonnaise dressings. You can change the salad dressing as you wish.

7. Use a similar rule in relation to sauces in a hot dish. Most sauces use high-fat cream, large amounts of butter. Remember that you have every right to ask for cream-free sauce.

8. In some restaurants, before serving the dishes, the waiter brings bread and butter as an appetizer. This is a good marketing move, because after eating butter on an empty stomach, you will be less satisfied with the main dishes than without it. And be sure to order something else. This is our physiology.

9. Before eating, prefer tea or water at room temperature, which will warm your stomach and prepare it for eating.

10. Be careful with alcohol! It increases appetite, anesthetizes the receptors of the stomach, blocks the satiety center and relieves responsibility.

It's time to go to a restaurant and start turning the rules into a good habit!

Alcohol, appetite and responsibility

Often during a period of weight loss, you find yourself festive table. Not only is there an enormous amount of delicious delicacies, you can’t resist - but also alcohol! And when drinking alcohol, the appetite increases markedly, and the sense of proportion decreases. Parable to help.

A monk was walking through this world and twilight caught him in the forest. It's scary to spend the night. The monk looked around and saw a house surrounded by a fence - a gate, a ring ... He approached, knocked. The gate was opened by a woman.

“Dear woman, will you let me spend the night?” Though in a barn, if only not in the forest.

- Well, you, dear man, - the woman answered, - come into the house.

She invited the monk to wash and seated him at the table to have supper.

“Is there anything I can do for you, dear woman?” You have been so kind to me…” the monk asks.

- I think, yes. I have a goat, old already, 12 years old. She would be killed, but the hand does not rise. She became like family to me. Kill the goat.

- What are you, dear woman. I am a monk. I can't kill. I'm sorry.

Dinner continued, and the monk asked again:

“Maybe I can still be of some help to you?”

- Yes, - says the hostess, - I have been a widow for 6 years and have not felt male affection for a long time. Spend the night with me.

The monk was confused.

“I'm sorry, dear woman, I can't afford that either. Alas, I made a vow not to touch a woman.

We sat down, were silent.

“Maybe I can do something for you?” I so want to thank you,” said the monk.

“Yes,” said the woman, “I have a bottle of wine in the corner. The wine is ripe. Let's have a drink and have a nice, heartfelt talk. I live alone and I don’t remember the last time I spoke heart to heart with someone.

The monk thought: “The sin seems to be small,” and agreed. Yes, and it was already inconvenient to refuse.

They drank a glass each, then, while talking sincerely, another glass, and another glass. About what happened next, history is silent.

Traditional section: how we reduced calories

Today is dessert. And the story of our client, weighing 124 kg, who claimed: "I eat almost nothing." To the question "Do you eat dessert?" the answer was given in the affirmative. “Yes,” said the woman, “I am eating dessert. I really love condensed milk. 2-3 times a week, not more often, I allow myself this dessert, which I cook myself. I pour a can of condensed milk into a deep plate, add a glass of granulated sugar and add 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder. To bewilderment about sugar - after all, condensed milk is already so sweet - the client, shrugging her shoulders, explained: “How can you not understand? Sugar crunches so deliciously on your teeth!”

We calculated: the calorie content of such a dessert was 2026 kcal. It would seem that practically the daily calorie content was consumed imperceptibly with the dessert.

You are absolutely right. The vast majority of all desserts are high in calories. But as they say - everything, but not everything!

For example, we took a cake with whipped cream. One serving weighing 150 g contains 657 kcal. And a serving of jelly with fresh fruit weighing 250 g contains only 105 kcal. There are plenty to choose from! Yes, and jelly at home is easier to prepare than a cake. Create!

Once you get rid of baggy and shapeless clothes,
you have no choice but to start losing weight.

Dec 15, 2015 tigress…s

Eating behavior includes all the habits of a person related to nutrition, his eating schedule, food choices, approach to food in general. In general, eating behavior is responsible for how, when, how much and what exactly a person eats. If you overeat - it's in your eating behavior, if you're undernourished - it's in it, if you maniacally love french fries or a good "refuel" food every night, if after every quarrel you run to the refrigerator or eat only once a day - in all these cases the roots you have to look for it in your eating habits. That is why it is so important that eating behavior is normal: it guarantees you both a good figure and the absence of neuroses associated with food.

The main injustice in this whole story is that often we completely forget about why we eat, what the whole process is for - we forget about hunger and satiety and completely trust our diet to eating behavior. This is a big mistake, because in this case our food loses its instinctiveness and becomes artificial. What does this mean? We eat when we are not hungry, and when we are hungry we endure, we overeat, ignoring desperate signals of oversaturation (because “it’s a feast!”), we choose unnatural foods that are not food in the normal sense at all ... in food we are subject to causes that have nothing to do with hunger and satiety. Therefore, it must be remembered that hunger should always be at the forefront, providing the body with energy, and eating behavior should be a servant of this main need, should ensure saturation - so that the body is as good as possible (read:).

How is eating behavior formed?

Upbringing. If a person has not specifically worked on his eating behavior, his eating habits are 90% the same as the habits of his parents, the way he was taught to eat from childhood. You were accustomed to porridge in the morning - and you continue to eat it, and if you refuse porridge, replace it with another carbohydrate that has about the same effect on the body.

Traditions. A person who has lived in France since childhood will, by definition, eat differently than a person born and raised, for example, in Brazil. It's a cultural difference between traditional cuisines different countries. The geographical factor can also be attributed here: the Italian diet will have a lot of fruits and olives, the Scandinavian diet will have a lot of seafood, the Dutch diet will have a lot of cheese and dairy products. It is natural for a person to gravitate towards products that are characteristic of his region, even if they are not particularly close to him in terms of pure taste.

habits. The best example is tea or juice in the morning. For example, one day you decide that morning juice is a good idea (healthy and nutritious, helps to wake up). You start drinking it, slowly get used to it - and after a month or two, morning without juice is not morning for you. That habits influence our eating behavior so much is both good news and bad news. Because, on the one hand, habits make us eat over and over again harmful product or overeating at night, but, on the other hand, we can develop a new habit in ourselves - useful, instill it, make it "native".

Lifestyle. Lifestyle greatly affects eating behavior for quite objective reasons: for example, you return home late from work and really cannot avoid a late dinner. Or you don't have a lunch break. Or you get up almost at dawn - and have breakfast very early. Or you don't have an oven at home and that's why you never eat baked foods.

personal tastes. You love cherries and hate apples, in the morning you don’t get a piece in your throat, but in the evening you “sharpen” until midnight, you hate vegetables, but love fruits - and so on. The reasons for personal tastes are sometimes impossible to establish: maybe they appeared in childhood, maybe you were just born with them (after all, even very young children have their own food preferences, their own way of eating). At this point, it is worth noting the personal tastes of people close to you. If your husband, for example, loves meat, and you are initially neutral about him, it is very likely that you will also start eating more over time; if your wife prefers to have dinner not at seven, but at nine in the evening, then sooner or later your dinner time will “slide” to nine.

Psychological factors. This is a fairly large group of factors, including various psychological reasons any approach to food. These may be the consequences of neuroses or some kind of psychological trauma: for example, you once had a car accident, and at that moment you ate grapes. We bet you won't look at grapes anymore? It can be an overestimated psychological importance of food: for example, you always eat when you are upset; you seem to console yourself with food or, conversely, encourage.

Eating disorder

But medicine is much better acquainted with eating disorders. Their long list can be divided into three types of eating disorders:

emotional. The reason for overeating or undereating in this case are emotional reasons. For example, a person, being upset, eats, sweeping literally everything in its path, or, conversely, cannot eat at all, starves for weeks after some kind of stress. Most often it is just about "jamming" stress.

External. When choosing a place, time and type of food, a person is guided not by an internal need (hunger, appetite), but external factors: good company, lunch time, cheapness or availability of food, etc. The most common manifestation of an external eating disorder can be called such a phenomenon as a person who does not know how to refuse food - even if he is not hungry, he has eaten for a long time if he cannot eat this product, etc. Such people eat up everything “to the bitter end” (even if it is a kilogram package of cookies) and crawl out from behind the table, terribly overeating.

Restrictive. Restrictive eating disorders are expressed in addiction to strict diets, artificial restriction of one's own diet, starvation, etc. Extreme cases of restrictive violations - anorexia and bulimia. This type of nutritional disorders is the most dangerous, since a person suffering from this is able to bring himself to death from exhaustion, he is very unstable emotionally, treats food inadequately - as an enemy, eats extremely unevenly.

Eating Behavior Change

Problem Definition. You need to understand what type of eating disorder is typical for you, and also try to find out the causes of this disorder. This is not always easy, as the reasons may be laid down in childhood or associated with some hidden psychological factors.

Choosing a strategy. You need to decide how you will transition to healthy eating behaviors. Two can be distinguished: a sharp or gradual transition. The first strategy is associated with some psychological shock, it is relevant for maximalists, for those who are used to doing everything at once and finally. The second strategy is softer, more forgiving, it allows you to introduce changes into your life slowly, without any shocks.

Plan development. For example, you have chosen a strategy of gradual transition to the correct eating behavior. The plan will be a step-by-step description of the direction in which you will move. Let's say you decide in the first week to learn how to control the amount of portions, in the next two you will gradually wean yourself from evening desserts, etc.

Implementation of a plan. The most difficult and responsible stage. At first, all this will be like a diet, as you will have to limit yourself. Repeatedly there will be a desire to quit everything, to return to the eating behavior that is comfortable for you. But the main thing here is to remember that you are working for your calm future in terms of food, that you will definitely succeed, because, fortunately, a person gets used to everything, even to healthy rituals and proper nutrition.