Ten mind-tricks to make you a healthier eater! Brilliantly simple tips from a top food psychologist...
- For the past 70 years we’ve flirted with every possible way of eating in the hope of long life - but healthy eating can remain elusive
- The secret may not be eating less, be being more relaxed around food
- Here, top food psychologist Professor Jane Ogden offers simple ways to improve our intake
For the past 70 years, we’ve flirted with every possible way of eating in the hope of health and long life. After the low-fat diets of the Sixties, the low-carb, Atkins plans of the Noughties and today’s sugar-free recipe books, you’d think we’d have cracked it.
Yet a good diet can still feel elusive. As a health psychologist who has studied eating behaviour and obesity for 25 years, I see where so many people go wrong and how simple it can be to get it right.
So here, I unravel the art of being a healthy eater: someone who follows a balanced diet and has a rational approach to food that allows them to keep to a sensible weight without trying too hard.
The good news is that it’s nothing to do with counting calories — or even worse, ‘dieting’ — and everything to do with being kind to yourself and trying to relax about food...
HUNGER IS NOT A SIGN TO SNACK
Healthy eating is obviously about putting the right kinds of food in your body, but it’s also about having the right attitude to food.
Food plays too many roles in our lives. We use it to cheer us up when we’re sad or bored and to communicate the kind of person we are.
To be a healthy eater means eating for the right reason: hunger. It’s time to rediscover the feeling of hunger. An easy way to do this is to stop snacking and start having three proper meals a day.
Studying the behaviour of overweight and obese people, I often hear them say they overeat because they feel hungry between meals.
But they’re not really hungry — they’re getting hungry. It’s natural and not something to panic about if you’re eating a proper breakfast, lunch and dinner. It just means you’ll really enjoy your next meal.
Eating when you’re hungry is a nice feeling. I’ve found that it’s only when people don’t eat proper meals that they want snacks.
Comfort eating? Food plays too many roles in our lives. We use it to cheer us up when we’re sad or bored and to communicate the kind of person we are
THREE-MINUTE CRAVINGS RULE
Remember that hunger isn’t just a physical process to do with how full or empty the stomach is — feelings of hunger essentially come from the mind. So if you crave something and feel you can’t think straight until you’ve had it, it’s worth exploring what is going on psychologically.
People like to think cravings are biological or due to an ‘addiction’, and tell themselves they ‘need’ a chocolate bar. In fact, it’s not the actual food they crave, it’s the meaning they have wrapped around the food. Chocolate represents a distraction, a break from work or a treat after a hard day.
Craving episodes last only a few minutes, so distract yourself — chat to a colleague or take a walk — then see if you still feel so desperate for it.
Last year, psychologists at Plymouth University and Queensland University of Australia reported that playing the computer game Tetris for three minutes reduces the strength of cravings for food and soft drinks. They suggested that during a craving, people visualise food they are thinking about — a visual task such as Tetris can disrupt this.
IMAGINE HOW YOU’LL FEEL AFTER A CAKE
Many people weaken at the sight of a shiny eclair or a basket of fries. But a good way to resist is to think about how you’ll feel afterwards — guilty, overly full and wishing you hadn’t.
Psychologists call this ‘anticipated regret’ — a technique shown to be effective for changing health behaviour such as exercise and food choices.
You could even picture your liver struggling to digest that food or the pockets of fat in your tummy or thighs desperate to suck up the calories.
If you embed that image in your mind, linking it to the food, you won’t want it the next time it’s winking at you from the shop window.
Even better is to think about how wholesome and smug you’ll feel after eating something healthy. I never liked running, but after doing a charity run following a friend’s death, I started doing it more regularly.
What motivates me is to think of the smug feeling I’ll have when I’ve finished. Don’t frame it in your mind as a loss — frame the healthy choice as a gain. You’ll feel proud of yourself for looking after your health.
Good advice: People like to think cravings are biological or due to an ‘addiction’, and tell themselves they ‘need’ a chocolate bar. In fact, it’s not the actual food they crave, it’s the meaning they have wrapped around the food
HEALTHY EATERS HAVE A GOOD LUNCH
How and where you eat is important, too: which means at a table, not at your desk, in front of a TV or while walking.
It’s become fashionable to say you’re too busy for a lunch break, but if you sit down and eat something mindfully — paying attention to the fact you’re eating — your brain will register ‘I’ve eaten’ and you won’t be so prone to cravings and hunger pangs later.
Last year, I led a study published in the Journal of Health Psychology where we gave 60 women a cereal bar to eat. One group had it while watching TV, the second while walking and the third talked to a friend while eating.
They were then offered snacks including chocolate, carrot sticks and crisps. Those who had eaten while walking ate five times more chocolate.
Any distraction can disrupt the brain’s ability to process the fact you’re eating and its impact on your hunger. We don’t recognise food we’ve had and want more.
JUST BECAUSE NIGELLA DOES IT ...
The modern world has become obsessed with food, in the form of controlling what we eat and cutting out food groups such as sugar or gluten or devouring cookery TV shows and books and needing to make every meal exciting. I’m afraid neither of these is healthy eating.
Celebrity chef-style meals tend to be high in butter, salt and fat. They also make food preparation seem complicated, so people feel intimidated by cooking from scratch and give up and buy ready meals and oven chips.
I wish there was a TV show that showed how to make pasta with stir-in pesto and salad — a typical dinner in my house. The truth is that most people probably have only a handful of recipes in their repertoire, such as spaghetti bolognese and shepherd’s pie, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Meanwhile, demonising certain foods, whether it’s carbs or wheat or sugar, also sets up an unhealthy preoccupation. Ultimately, it often makes these foods more alluring — and irresistible at moments of weakness.
It's all about timing: How and where you eat is important, too: which means at a table, not at your desk, in front of a TV or while walking
Indeed, in my studies of successful dieters — people who lose weight and keep it off — many report replacing a restricted diet, where certain foods are banned, with a flexible one that enables them to treat themselves without feeling guilty. ‘I don’t feel deprived of anything . . . I feel as if I’m enjoying normal food, not diet food,’ one told me.
So unless you have a medical reason such as coeliac disease or an allergy, there is no food I’d avoid completely, apart from perhaps fizzy drinks, which are high in sugar and have no value.
It’s fine to sometimes have cakes, chocolate, biscuits, but keep them out of the house — don’t go down the biscuit aisle at the supermarket. Instead, enjoy these things on special occasions. That way you won’t feel deprived and can truly indulge.
A healthy eater sees food as fuel — something to be enjoyed, but not something to fixate on.
And rather than being a perfectionist, it’s better in the long run to be a few pounds heavier than you’d like, but have a realistic diet that fits your life.
WHAT IF YOU LIKE ‘UNHEALTHY’ FOOD?
Some people say their problem is they like all the ‘wrong’ things and find food such as broccoli and wholemeal bread unappetising. These tastes may have formed from when you were a child, but you can unlearn them.
We often end up changing our tastes during a window in life when other things are changing, for example, when we start a new relationship — we change to fit in with other people.
But if everything else in your life is constant, changing tastes can be done by simple repetition — drilling that change into your routine. If you keep doing something, even if you don’t like it, a new habit will form and within a month you’ll want to do it.
A brain scanning study demonstrated how pliable our tastes are. Psychiatrists at Tufts University in the U.S. followed overweight people on a weight-loss programme. They were helped to eat healthy foods when hungry.
At the start, the reward centres in their brains lit up when they saw pictures of high-calorie foods. But after six months, they showed an increased reward response to low-calorie foods and decreased response to junk food.
I’d advise doing the same: buy the foods you’d like to eat more of, so you’re forced to have them when you’re hungry at meal times.
You might not lose your sweet tooth, but you may start liking an apple with lunch instead of crisps, or stop wanting pudding after your meal.
Don't so it! 'My rules for food shopping are: write a list for the whole week and shop for the whole week, buy basic ingredients not meals, and only get foods you’ll feel good — smug, even — after eating'
DON’T READ THE FOOD LABELS
My rules for food shopping are: write a list for the whole week and shop for the whole week, buy basic ingredients not meals, and only get foods you’ll feel good — smug, even — after eating.
I wouldn’t encourage people to read labels. People only really read them on ready meals, which should be avoided at all costs.
Far better to buy fruit and veg — which don’t have labels — fish, meat and basics such as rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes and cheese, than to decide between a shop-bought curry or a shop-bought shepherd’s pie.
Cooking from scratch is rule number one of a healthy diet. Indeed, when people report success from a rule-based diet — for example, cutting out sugar or carbs — it’s usually simply because they force you to cook from scratch.
Even if you’re short of time, I always remind people that in the ten minutes you spend stabbing the lid of a ready meal, putting it in the microwave and finding a plate, you could cook pasta with tinned tomatoes and peppers.
If you’re worried you’ll overeat, don’t cook as much. If you want extra for the next day, put a portion on a plate and immediately put the rest in the fridge or freezer so you don’t pick.
NEVER SAY DIET TO YOUR CHILDREN
We should watch the language we use around children to instil in them a healthy attitude towards eating. I would avoid words such as ‘diet’ and any talk of yours, their or other people’s body weight.
If you’re losing weight, don’t let them see you celebrate getting thinner — instead, let them see you celebrate the fact you’re fitter and can do more with your life.
My other rules are: eat with your children, only bring foods into the house that you want them to eat, and let them see you eating well.
Always frame eating well in a positive light. Don’t say: ‘I’m sorry, you have to eat this because it’s good for you.’ Do say ‘This is tasty and crunchy’ or ‘Yum, we’ve made shepherd’s pie.’
Reverse sexism: It’s been suggested that men are unlikely to diet because the weight loss industry is strongly targeted at women, and men feel terms such as ‘diet’ are not considered manly
NEVER PUT YOUR MAN ON A 'DIET'
Recent statistics show 65 per cent of men in England are obese, compared with 58 per cent of women.
Yet research shows men are less likely to see being overweight as a problem or engage with weight loss services.
It’s been suggested this is because the weight loss industry is strongly targeted at women, and men feel terms such as ‘diet’ are not considered manly.
If you’re trying to eat more healthily, it’s vital to tell those around you.
I often advise men to find other ways to frame it if they’re embarrassed. So, rather than saying ‘I’m counting calories’ or ‘I’m on a diet’, try: ‘I want to start looking after myself.’
STOP KIDDING YOURSELF
Deep down, most people know the essentials of healthy eating. They know that all they have to do is eat lots of fruit and vegetables, complex carbohydrates (brown bread and pasta, rather than white), some protein and relatively low amounts of fat and sugar.
However, we are flooded with ever-changing advice about things such as saturated versus unsaturated fat, added sugar and intrinsic sugar, and people use that confusion to justify giving up and carrying on behaving in a way they know isn’t right.
This is also partly why fad diets can be alluring — people prefer to jump on a simple rule and tell themselves that’s all they need to do. But these kind of diets aren’t sustainable and don’t fit with most people’s lives.
If you’re overweight or unhealthy, it’s not because you’re eating butter rather than olive oil, or because you’re drinking cola and not diet cola.
Those are tiny parts of your diet. It’s all the other things you do — from mindless snacking to de-stressing every night with wine or chocolate.
