Think your way to a healthier diet

Have you ever had a conversation with someone about a delicious meal you once had... and then found yourself craving that same meal, that evening?

Or have you ever had a friend tell you about the delicious pasta dish they are cooking that night and found that you really want to also eat pasta for dinner?

Or perhaps you are reminiscing with a partner about the amazing food you ate whilst on holiday in Asia and then find that you both want to order that same cuisine for lunch that day.

The way in which we imagine food has a huge effect on the food choices that we make. If you want to eat more healthy food - but imagine healthy food as just involving boring, limp lettuce leaves and overcooked broccoli - you are very unlikely to consistently eat those healthy foods. If however, you think of a wonderfully colourful and delicious healthy dish that you ate containing these ingredients - perhaps some fragrant summer rolls, with a delicious peanut sauce ... you are much more likely to build more healthy food into your diet.

So start becoming aware of how you picture food and the stories that you create around food. If you want to eat more of a particular food e.g. more veggies - if you start picturing delicious meals with those veggies in them - you will be much more driven to eat those vegetables. Taste also partly comes from the mind. So if you imagine a food to taste delicious, it is much more likely to taste delicious. Whereas if you imagine a food to taste disgusting, you are likely to gag even before getting it down.

By changing how you think about foods - and focusing on times you have enjoyed those foods a lot - you can easily build more of these healthy ingredients into your day-to-day life. It is also SO KEY to make sure that you are eating and choosing food that gives you pleasure. Healthy eating becomes so much more sustainable when you are using those nourishing ingredients to put together a diverse range of delicious meals. Healthy does not have to be boring. Healthy does not have to be tasteless. In fact - when you think of the wide range of delicious meals you can make - with nutritious ingredients in them - healthy can be incredibly delicious.

“Every time you use the word ‘healthy,’ you lose. The key is to make yummy, delicious food that happens to be healthy.” – Marcus Samuelsson