Healthy Eating

Focus is everything when goalsetting your healthy eating plan

The need to focus on your development skills should not be understimated.

If you approach nutrition goal setting following the format outlined in the previous parts , you'll clearly identify early on, any challenges or barriers to you achieving your goal.

You will also gain awareness of the skills you'll need to develop to overcome them.

Your development skills should also include activities such as researching information on diet and food nutrition; how to eat healthy; as well as increasing your knowledge with further reading on healthy cooking recipes, healthy low fat recipes etc.,

You might want to learn more about what is perhaps the most healthy diet in the world Mediterranean Diet and the many benefits it can offer both you and your family.

By devoting your strict attention to this aspect of goal setting your healthy eating plan, you're more likely to gain deeper insights into any underlying issues that might impact significantly on your level of success. Here is a good example for you to consider.

A close friend of mine was adamant that 'this time she was going to stick to her healthy eating goal'. What was different this time to all the other times? The level of focus she applied to the challenges, barriers and development skills areas of goalsetting her healthy eating plan.

You see, in the past she had succumbed to junk foods because she had not appropriately addressed the root cause for her comfort eating and why she would soon lose her motivation thus abandoning her healthy eating nutrition goal.

Her husband would often demean her efforts, which seriously grated on her, undermining her healthy eating goal in the process.

Needless to say, she lost her motivation as many times as she had set goals and quickly reverted back to junk food.

Each time, her eating seem to escalate and although she was aware that it was down to her losing her motivation, she was oblivious as to the cause. She was encouraged to journal her moods, what - and how she was experiencing; her feelings and her perception of the need junk food was fulfilling.

The journaling exercise revealed that her self esteem was being eroded by her husband's hurtful comments - (albeit unintentional) - e.g. being told she was 'too fat and it would take forever for her to lose weight', or 'you know you're going to jack it in, in a couple of days time, so why bother punishing yourself'.

The exercise also helped her to realise that she perhaps wasn't being as communicative with him as to how his comments were making her feel.

She further gained insight into how and why she was eating for comfort rather than out of hunger each time her esteem took a bashing. By identifying these barriers and blocks to her nutrition goal setting, she was able to focus on her development skills - i.e. setting herself further mini goals to improve her communications with her husband and to work on building her low self esteem.

Do you see how by taking a big underlying issue and analysing it, you too can break your larger goal down into smaller achievable goals?

By exploring all possible avenues, you'll see how easily each subsequent step will then lead you toward achieving that bigger healthy eating goal.

Whether your unhealthy eating habits are a time-mangement/ time constraint issue or to do with comfort eating - due to the present state of your self-esteem, or even to lose weight, the process of goalsetting your healthy eating plan can only help you to get to the root of the matter.

Self Help on goalsetting your healthy nutrition plan

Use your journal for goalsetting your healthy eating plan activities, as well as for listing everything you can now do to improve your healthy eating diet.

A good technique is to start at the beginning of the day and record each meal for an entire day. Do include your views on what and how you're eating and drinking.

You can then list all the changes you plan on making to your eating habits. Keep it real - there's no point listing foods you clearly don't like.

You can spice up this activity by cutting out healthy recipes as you come across them and even pictures or images of tasty looking healthy recipes/meals that inspire you. Just paste them into your journal.

If you're prone to eat when you're low, then you'll want to record your feelings and thoughts on the matter here. You can also journal any ideas or concerns you have in relation to goalsetting your healthy eating plan. For example:

How creative can you get? Your success is in your hands!

"Never trust a fat dietitian" (Funny Quote: Anonymous)

Back To Goalsetting Your Healthy Nutrition Plan

Resources:

http://www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines
(Get further information on Dietary Guidelines)

Check out this page for some handy tips on how to get your family to eat more fruit and veg without them even realising it. http://www.foodandhealth.com/fools.pdf

A good source of information on nutrition, including numerous free resources such as calorie calculator health calandar, menu planner, recipes etc., http://www.foodandhealth.com/index2.php

Provide a good source of information on the nutritional value of a wide range of seasonal fruit and vegetables http://www.foodfit.com/healthy/healthyFallFoods.asp

An excellent guide to nutrition http://nutrition.about.com/mbody.htm?pid=2756&cob=home they also have a food nutrition forum http://nutrition.about.com/mpboards.htm

The information on this site is purely of educational value and is not intended to replace your seeking medical advice. You must consult your doctor over all your health concerns.

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