Busting Nutrition Myths

Good nutrition has been a big part of the messaging we’ve received in recent years and for good reason: never, in the modern world, have we had so much preventable disease related specifically to the food we consume. More and more, the food we eat, and how we eat it, has the potential to dysregulate the processes in our bodies that keep us healthy.  This influx of messaging around healthy eating and healthy choices however, comes with some level of confusion and overwhelm. It’s understandable that there are misunderstandings around what it means to eat for good health and the best ways to go about that – with food pyramids, food plates, good and bad ingredients lists and inventories of essential nutrients that keep changing.

Here I’m going to break down three top myths about good nutrition for the sake of making the process a little easier.

Myth Number 1: Eating for health needs to be extreme

As a society we have moved past the misnomer that healthy food means eating salad all day long. We do now understand that there is more to a good diet than green leaves (as important as they are). We know that we need to find a balanced diet and yet the idea that healthy eating is difficult persists. And that can be true, depending on how it’s done.

Eating well isn’t actually about transforming our diets overnight. It’s not going from having “treats” every day to giving our dishes a total makeover. We don’t go from a bowl of cereal to a bowl of porridge, from a heaping plate of pasta to a mound of vegetables or from a bacon sandwich to a salad. That would be destructive and depressing.

What many of us don’t realise immediately is that enjoying food, really enjoying it without feelings of guilt is extremely important. So is “treating” ourselves. Practically, what this means is that if we’re starting from a place of what would be considered unhealthy eating, we need to manage changes so that they are simple, enjoyable and healthy.

This is not as difficult as it seems.

What we’re looking to do is move from a bowl of cereal to a bowl of cereal with fresh fruit as an addition, from a bowl of pasta to a bowl of pasta with sauteed vegetables stirred through and a bacon sandwich to a bacon sandwich with wholegrain bread and lettuce, tomatoes and pickles. And there’s a million variations on these simple changes that can make a massive difference to our health though they seem small.

And, small changes like these, that are targeted at our specific eating habits can start a powerful knock-on effect; they can improve our energy levels, cravings, weight loss and hormone balance which, in turn, motivate us to make even more changes.

Making basic changes and, crucially, making sure that we are enjoying food, can be the catalyst for long-term weight loss and good health. It’s knowing what changes to make that is the difference between being stuck in poor health and finding the freedom of feeling and looking well every day.

Myth number 2: there are rules to follow

If eating healthily means you have to follow rules, then you’re doing it wrong.

That’s a bold statement. Let me be clear in saying that this does not apply to those who are changing their diets due to illness. Illness mandates that we take drastic measures which means that we may have to adhere to rigid eating habits and follow rules that save our bodies from worsening health or even death. That is non-negotiable.

But if we’re talking about working towards generally eating better for long-term health, we want to take our minds and emotions along for the ride. This means there cannot be a daily struggle between what we want and what we feel we should do. We’re aiming to want everything that is good for us not to force ourselves into submission.

The word “should” is the enemy of changing habits.

Yes, technically there are foods and lifestyle habits that support good health and those that, if taken in abundance, do not. However, we are trying to create a bridge between healthy eating and the aspects of who we are as individuals; what foods we enjoy, what we may need at particular times of our day or our lives and what stressors we have to cope with.

What this means in a lived sense is this: eat the slice of cake that feels like a treat, have a Friday night take-out that you look forward to, order without counting calories at dinner with friends. But also enjoy everyday salads full of ingredients you love, weeknight vegetarian dinners bursting with variety and snacks that help you feel fuller longer.

This way, healthy eating feels right, natural and balanced. Rather than being good for our bodies and wrong for our minds (which ends up being wrong for our bodies anyway), this type of balanced eating helps us thrive.

Myth number 3: We all know how to eat right

It is true that pretty much all of us understand the basic mechanics of healthy eating. It doesn’t take a nutritional wizard to understand that a slice of chocolate cake is not as good for us as a medley of vegetables or that a herbal tea is a better choice than a can of soda.

These things are relatively easy to understand.

And I don’t want to deter anyone from making healthier choices because we are all perfectly capable of doing that. However, often, food becomes complicated. Food being complicated is the reason we now have so many diet-related preventable diseases impeding our lives. And navigating food choices these days isn’t simple. For anyone.

So, while healthy eating is straightforward, the forces that influence our eating habits are not; advertising, convenience, flavour enhancers, social norms, busy schedules, stress levels, hormone imbalances, the list could go on and on. What this means for us when we’re trying to change our eating habits is that some support and guidance goes a long way, particularly for habits that are stubborn. The habits that we have tried repeatedly to deal with and keep falling back into no matter what we try. The habits that quietly make us feel like failures and surreptitiously erode our self-esteem and resolve.

Rather than stall ourselves in the belief that eating healthily is always easy, I recommend finding someone to work with to offer guidance and support to bypass frustrating challenges and discover new and creative solutions to streamline healthy eating. Sometimes it just takes some initial support to land you on the path to a lifetime of better health where you are able to take control back yourself.