Have Baby, Will Exercise: If You Want To Be Healthy, Don’t Diet

havebabyfinal4__1424973727_142.196.167.223You don’t have to eat healthy in order to exercise and there’s nothing wrong with rewarding a particularly tough workout with a bowl of ice cream. But maintaining a healthy body weight can improve your overall health, and achieving that goal is easier if you both work out and are mindful about what you eat. Plus, if you’re working up a sweat on a regular basis you may find that you have more energy to get through the day when you eat nutritious foods.

However, research suggests that diets don’t work as a long term solution to maintain a healthy body weight. People who try to lose weight on a diet with set parameters as to how many calories they can have in a day or by restricting certain foods for a specific period of time often end up gaining back what they lose (and sometimes more). It may seem contradictory, but if you really want to be healthy, you need to remove the word ‘diet’ from your vocabulary.

I asked Janet Yarrow, a Nutrition Instructor and Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, what the key is to life long healthy eating:

 Adopting a life long healthy diet is a matter of changing your habits and mindset. To be successful as a life long healthy eater you need to change how you approach food. It’s important to value the quality of what you eat over the quantity. When shopping for your family, chose the best quality food you can afford. For example, grass fed beef is more expensive, but you can use your meat budget to purchase a smaller amount of this higher quality beef and you will still have the same satisfaction of eating red meat, but it will be healthier for you.

Trying to find time to sit down for meals can be a struggle when dealing with work and the multiple schedules of the family, but Yarrow stresses the importance of mindful eating. By making meals an deliberate act– setting the table, putting away your phone, taking the time to chew your food– you can pay attention to what you’re eating and be more in tune with choices like taking a second helping of vegetables instead of reaching for a second dinner roll. By slowing down and concentrating on your meal your mind will be more aware of what you’re eating and when you’re full.

If you struggle with portion control Yarrow recommends starting off with smaller portions so you can go back and have seconds if you are still hungry. If you often find yourself feeling stuffed at the end of a meal, Yarrow suggests trying to always leave something on your plate. “Even three green peas,” she says, “leave something there so you can get used to giving yourself permission to not have to finish the entire plate.”

 Planning your meals in advance, whether it’s for the day or for the week can be helpful because you are less likely to reach for something unhealthy as a quick fix when you know the next time you’ll be eating and what you’re going to have. Carrying easy snacks with you, like a small bag of almonds or piece of fruit can help you avoid impulse snack food purchases that you don’t truly want, but have for the convenience.

There are small diet changes you can make that over time can have a big impact on your health. Cut back on soda and juice (try diluting juice little by little if cutting it out cold turkey is too hard). Swap the mayo on your sandwiches for heart healthy avocado. Have air popped popcorn, which is a whole grain, instead of potato chips with your sandwich.

Carbohydrates are a controversial topic with diets today, but whether they come from bread or vegetables, we need them to survive. It seems that humans are wired to enjoy carbs in much larger amounts than fat or protein.Yarrow pointed out that if you were offered a platter of steak or bacon at a certain point you’d get full and stop eating but it’s much easier to keep reaching into a bag of cookies or chips. If you often overindulge with carbs, reach for whole grain rices and breads instead of white or refined versions. Pour chips or cookies out on a plate instead of eating from the package to be more mindful or portion size.

Yarrow opposes setting any particular parameters as to what eating healthy should look like, and she’s right, because to set out a list of rules to follow would be far too similar to a “diet”. Instead she urges us eat as many unprocessed whole foods as possible and to, “Eat what you enjoy and cultivate a desire for foods you like.” Everyone will have natural preferences for certain fruits or vegetables, and Yarrow says that’s fine. It’s the overall variety and range of colors that matters. There’s no need to force feed yourself broccoli if you just don’t like how it tastes. When you’re trying to adopt the mindset of eating healthy foods for your entire life and not for a limited period of time, you need to find foods that you actually want to eat and will crave.

There’s this idea that eating healthy means eating either sad, pre-packaged frozen dinners or bland piles of lettuce topped with grilled chicken, but it doesn’t have to be like that. There are tons of healthy, fast and easy recipes that rely on flavorful spices and small amounts of richer ingredients to create delicious meals that will leave you satisfied.

Trying to maintain a healthy diet doesn’t mean never having unhealthy food. Yarrow says it’s important to indulge, that part of the fun in life is having treats. But when you make the choice to reach for richer foods, try to do it mindfully. Take the time to savor the food and aim for real sugar over artificial sweeteners, as studies suggest they could cause you to crave more sweets and overeat. If you’re going to have a cookie, have a cookie, not a “diet” substitute like Snackwells or those 100 calorie packs. Your body’s craving for sugar will be satisfied with less of the real sugar and fat that the low calorie impersonators. Adopting these habits can help your child model your behaviors and lead to them to learning the balance between eating well and indulging.

Being healthy is a lifelong challenge, not an achievement to be unlocked. Eating well can help you get there. The trick is not to diet, but to focus on eating what makes you feel good on a day to day basis, even if what makes you feel good is the occasional cupcake.

Have Baby,Will Exercise is a column dedicated to fitness and health for moms, by a mom. As a former personal trainer, group fitness instructor and cupcake addict, I hope to encourage and motivate moms who want to make fitness a part of their lives.

(image:Everett Collection/Shutterstock)

Similar Posts