Changing Your Eating Habits: A Step-wise Approach
Channel: Maya Adam
Date: 2016-01-19

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Transcription:
Many people struggle to get started when they’re advised to improve their eating habits. Here are some tips that can help us achieve sustainable positive change.

Firstly, it’s important to take a step-wise approach to making dietary changes. One or two small changes each week will lead to more sustainable change than trying to make many drastic changes all at once. Identifying target areas for change – like times of day that are particularly challenging for you or situations in which they tend to overeat, can help to define those step-wise changes and come up with an action plan, to be reviewed at your next doctor's next visit. For example, in week one, your goals might be: to replace all sweetened beverages in the fridge with unsweetened sparkling water and to eliminate post-dinner snacks. You might even find creative ways to remind herself of this change by brushing and flossing her teeth soon after dinner. Additional goals, added in the second week, might include bringing a homemade lunch to work instead of grabbing a hotdog from the vendor down the street and replacing the high-calorie, heavily processed snack foods in the home with fresh fruits and crisp vegetables that can be served with a healthy dip, like hummus. Later on, you might decide to try avoiding meat on one or two days a week and, instead eat plant-based proteins like beans or lentils on those days. The key is making small, step-wise changes that don’t leave you feeling deprived of the joy that eating brings with it. Self-deprivation is rarely sustainable.

Behavioral changes alone can be an important part of the step-wise action plan. And they can facilitate weight control, even without consciously changing the foods your patient eats. For people who like the idea of focusing on behavioral changes, encouraging them to sign a contract with themselves stating that, for the next month they will only eat when they are seated at a table using cutlery and a plate. This change alone increases the likelihood that the foods being consumed will be well thought-out, rather than impulse indulgences. A similar behavioral change is the decision to cook at home twice, three times or maybe even every night of the week. The chances of those foods being healthier than what was consumed before are high. 

Sustainable dietary improvements require a realistic, targeted approach that focuses on progressive improvements in the diet, without the fear of failure that comes when you try to achieve unrealistic dietary goals. Food is one of the greatest joys of life and optimizing our health, means giving them the tools to identify foods and eating behaviors that will satisfy them while protecting their long-term health. 

Course by Maya Adam, MD
Directed by William Bottini
Animated by Huy Tran
Editing by William Bottini & Tamsin Orion
Special thanks to Michael Pollan, Tracy Rydel, and David Eisenberg