In general, I like to eat healthy food. When prepared well with high-quality ingredients, healthy food tastes excellent, makes me happy, energizes me, and improves both my physical and psychological senses of well-being. For example, a sandwich on crusty whole-grain bread piled high with crisp and juicy veggies makes me happy just thinking about eating it and the feeling I get afterwards.
Obligatory image of healthy food
I also love cooking – combining great ingredients using a collection of culinary techniques, experienced know-how, and creativity to synthesize a cohesive whole out of parts appeals to a great number of my passions: adventure, creativity, eating, and even analysis – if something turns out poorly, then it’s a learning experience; on the other hand, sometimes I end up surprising myself, which is both wonderful and another opportunity to learn and apply that knowledge in the future!
The problem with both of these loves is that, in the moment, I’m prone to do neither of them. When hunger strikes, I’ll go for very fatty, salty, sugary, and (in general) unhealthy processed foods. Instant gratification is a powerful tempter and these kinds of foods appeal to my base physical cravings very directly. I’m sure you’re familiar with the evolutionary arguments of why these foods are so sought after by our metabolisms, so I won’t bore you or excuse my impulses – what’s important is that they do exist, not why that is.
So, in order to protect my overall self from my self-in-the-moment, I employ a few tricks. Fresh fruit or a bagel with cream cheese make great snacks, and so does a quick fruit smoothie (one banana, some vanilla yoghurt, and some frozen fruit, for example, blended as much as you like). By keeping plenty of these things on hand, I have a healthy option when hunger strikes – the “trick” here is that they’re tasty and easy. I also rarely buy traditional snack foods, such as potato chips, cookies, or sugary carbonated beverages (even if they’re really, really good served at about 2 °C in a chilled glass). If they’re not in my kitchen, then I don’t eat them! Another way I try to keep my eating healthy is to pick great ingredients when I’m at the grocery store. As a rule of thumb, I stick to the perimeter – most of the unhealthy, processed food is in the aisles, while great things like whole-grain bread, dairy products, meat and fish, the deli, and produce are all located at or near the edges of the store. There are exceptions (I buy canned tomatoes all the time because homemade tomato sauce is so easy and delicious), but that’s why it’s a rule of thumb. If I buy a lot of baby spinach, tomatoes, onions, and peppers, it’s easy to throw together a quick salad whenever I’m already making a meal.
What this all boils down to is that if you want to eat healthy food, you need to do two things: make it harder on yourself to eat unhealthy stuff, and make it easier to eat the good stuff! If you have any techniques for eating better, I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment!
