Is this the year of healthy eating?
HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you! May the new year bring you all the fulfilment and happiness you desire and may all your wishes come true.
With a new year come new resolutions for the year ahead! Have you set yours? For the first time I have thought far more about where I want to be next year. It is my belief that if you don’t really think about where you want to get to you will never be able to achieve your dreams because everything will just become a very foggy map. Just think about really mapping out where you want to go to and you will be far more accountable for the milestones by the end of the year (think this is very much my inner self talking to me as well :P).
This year I really want to focus on making myself happy. This might sound egocentric, but it is actually not. WE and NO ONE else are in charge of our own happiness. If you don’t fulfil your own dreams no one will do it for you. We will look around at our own partners, husbands, boyfriends and children and we will expect of them to make us happy, sometimes by pushing them towards a dream that we wanted to achieve…well this is actually egoistic in my perspective…because you are trying to live your dreams through someone else and not letting them achieve their own. It’s hard to go achieve your dreams…because we feel we have a responsibility towards other people, to put their needs first…however the paradox is that if we are happy then the people around us are happy as well. YES, there will be compromises…but this should not compromise our own happiness. Only we know how to achieve this balance.
For me happiness is reflected in 2 things:
– Healthy body. Because if your body is healthy then you are able to go achieve those dreams you set for yourself;
– Healthy mind. If you mind is healthy then it is able to assist you in focusing on the things that make you happy.
The other way round is also valid in my perspective.
It’s funny sometimes how we think and behave…by now we all vowed that January is the start of a new diet, no more drinking (at least for January), no sugar so we can shed all those extra kilos we have accumulated over Christmas in 2 words is all about healthy eating and exercising. But by mid-January we are all so miserable and so craving for something that tastes great that as the last day of the month approaches we fall back to indulging into food that is perceived to taste good but in actual fact it doesn’t help our body that much. Therefore, not only we are not keeping our body healthy but also we are in a foul mood constantly: when we are not “on a diet” because we know we are indulging but the paradox is that the food tastes sooo good and when we are “on a diet” because we do not enjoy what we eat. We seem to really like extremes. The bad news is that we are constantly unhappy and we ruin any chance of a balance. I am a strong believer that it all starts from our attitude.
You could say there are 2 schools of thought in regards to the relationship we have with food:
1. Food is fuel for the tank. If you are fussy about what you put in your tank, you will die. Now shut up and eat your vegetables 🙂
2. Good food is like good music that you can taste or a colour that you can smell (source: Ratatouille:) ). Eating healthy can and should always taste good. Food is the greatest experiences we have in life: it can engage all of our senses (smell, touch, taste, sight, hearing). Eating healthy is not about denying yourself a pleasure but it is about ensuring you are given the right choices to allow your body to thrive rather than stressing your body to get rid of accumulated toxins. There are so many ways we can still enjoy so called “forbidden foods” but with a few twists that will make your body and mind feel great.
As already written in my principles, I am not a fan of a particular diet (in fact I don’t like using the word diet) as this leads to restrictions and extremes, which can in turn make you unhappy. I have tried different eating styles and found that each helped me in one way but there were other principles that did the opposite. Therefore, I have adopted a more holistic view on leading a healthy lifestyle. For example, I am not always looking for gluten free options but I am looking for more variation of different grains and cereals. I do however, avoid wheat because it has been overly processed and modified in order to ensure we get bigger crops that are able to feed a growing population.
Therefore, I have tried to summarise in a simple table the key principles of healthy eating that I follow to keep me on track.
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