Do you want your Healthy New Years Resolutions to last?

We’ve all been there. It’s Christmas day and we’ve already had three Christmas parties, Christmas lunch and now Christmas dinner. As we go for that second serve of turkey, cake or glass of wine, during the silly season, we think to ourselves: “I’ll start my health kick in the new year”.

The only thing is…. you’ve done this before. Many times, in fact! Every single year, you find yourself planning on a diet in the near future. But it just doesn’t seem to work!

So what is it about diets that follow New Year's Resolutions that just don’t work?

Eating healthier is one of the most common New Year's resolutions. Every year, many of us wake up on the 1st of Jan ready to cut the booze, cut the sugar and hit the gym. There are so many different diets, weight loss programs and gimmicky ways to eat, floating around this time of year. It can all be so confusing and misleading.

There are a couple of ‘icky’ things that can happen here.

ONE, people don’t really understand what they are trying to achieve. Losing weight and eating healthy are not the same thing. Not everyone realises this! This often means that people can be sucked into following a very straight forward, but very unrealistic diet for a very short amount of time. An example of this is a ‘no sugar’ diet, or a ‘no carb’ diet. If you are a sweet tooth, it’s really unrealistic for you to cut out sugar for more than a few weeks! You may lose some weight from not eating sugar for a month, but the issue may be when you introduce it back into your diet, you’ll find it comes back very quickly.

TWO, viewing food as ‘bad’ enough to cut out, can break down your relationship with food. This means that it’s easy to get caught in a cycle of restricting food that your body or your mind craves, and then binging. Restrict, binge, restrict, binge… feelings of guilt, anxiety, maybe even dependency on food. This can make it really hard to make some real, sustainable, healthy changes.

ALSO, everybody AND every body is different. So following a diet that works for someone else, may not work for you. You may have different metabolisms, activity levels, and health goals etc. If you think that losing weight is still your main goal, I encourage you to speak to a nutrient expert or health professional, such as a dietitian, to make the most informed and safe choices!

If you still want to stick to ‘eating healthier’ as your resolution this year, I challenge you to make healthy eating part of your life, rather than just dieting for the month. Eating healthy is not about making DRASTIC changes to the way you eat. It’s about adjusting the types of food and the amount of food to suit your taste, body, physical activity, life stage etc.

Here are THREE tips you can follow to eat healthier this year:

1. Choose foods that keep you fuller for longer.

Choosing foods that keep you fuller for longer can result in less over-eating, excess snacking and eating portions that are too big. Excess consumption of kilojoules over a long period of time results in the energy being stored as fat, which can result in weight gain. But again, weight gain does not necessarily mean bad, and weight loss doesn’t necessarily mean healthy!

Foods that can keep you fuller for longer, are foods that are high in fiber. Choosing wholegrain over ‘white’, keeping the skins on fruits and vegetables or choosing more seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables can all increase your fiber intake.

By incorporating more fiber in your meals, you may find you’ll need less at meal-time to feel satisfied.

For example: 

Option 1: Ham and cheese sandwich with 2 slices of ham, 1 slice of cheese, butter and white bread. Delish! But you’ll be hungry in no time, so you’ll likely rely on energy dense snacks to fill the void.

Option 2: Ham and cheese sandwich with 2 slices of ham, 1 slice of cheese, wholegrain bread, ½ grated carrot (skin on) and a smear of humus. This option has more fiber and you’ll likely be satisfied for longer and it’ll sustain you until your next proper meal. 

2. Choose a wider variety of foods. 

A wide variety of foods means a wide variety of vitamins and minerals. If you don’t know where to start, a good visual guide is to check whether your plate of food has a lot of different colours! Greens, reds, oranges, yellows, blacks, browns. 

For example: Spaghetti Bolognese is red and yellow. If you add in some finely chopped or grated zucchini and carrots into the sauce, you add in green and orange! This actually means that you’re adding in vitamins such as Vit A and C, B12, and fiber - and also reducing the amount of saturated fats in your portion. WIN, WIN!

Here’s a tip that works for me. I order produce boxes from the farmers market that include a random selection of fruits and vegetables each week. This forces me to eat a range of different produce that are seasonal, so I don’t stick with only the same fruits and vegetables all of the time! It’s also fun getting something you’ve never cooked with before and then researching a fun recipe to include it. Celeriac? Artichoke? Kang Kong? Um, what a thrill!

3. Manage your portion size.

This is my biggest challenge. I’m good with my fiber, and I’m good with incorporating lots of different produce in my meals, but I love food and going for seconds is where I tend to overeat. 

A few tips I recommend from my Nutritionist days are:

1. Plate up using a smaller plate. Plates these days are huge, so it’s easy to scoop too much onto the plate to make it look full. If your plate is smaller, less is needed for it to look full. And a lot of eating is psychological, so trick your brain into thinking it as a full plate of food!

2. Don’t go for seconds. Eat what brings you joy, my friends. When you can add in that fiber, and extra colours, that’s great, but if you just want a slice of basque cheesecake, GO FOR IT. But limit yourself to one serve. That’s it. If going for seconds is your achilles heel (like mine), then there’s no need to cut out certain foods, just limiting seconds will go a long way. 

3. Pack away your lunch before you start eating. My partner and I love cooking big batches with intentions to pack the rest of lunch the next day. But by the time we finish our plate, get seconds, and pick at the edges, there’s not enough for lunch, and we’ve overeaten heaps. Once you finish cooking, pack your lunches into containers and only serve up what you need to eat for dinner. Et voila, harder to overeat.

I know these are really basic tips, but basic tips means they will be easier to follow for longer. If you can do these tips for longer, they’ll become a habit. Once these become a habit, you can add a few more little adjustments and I know you’ll start to feel better! 

One last thing.

If you have any questions about your health, your weight or your diet, it’s always good to check in with your GP or get a referral to chat to a dietitian. They’ll be able to give you the best advice that suits YOU. 

Good luck with all of your goals and resolutions for this year!