Lately, we’ve found our clients feeling pulled between two worlds:  either you’re giving into diet culture and overexercising or you’re embracing your body fully as it is, which means not changing it.

But often, there’s a third way, where we take the good from both sides.  

That may look like embracing your body as it is now and also opting to pursue habits that improve your health.  Not as a way to punish your body or make it fit a certain cultural mold, but as a way to care for your body and enable you to have the strength and energy to live life to the fullest.

If you find yourself wanting to pursue this third option, it can be tough to know how to adopt new health habits in a life-giving way.  What we eat can be an especially tough topic to enter into for a variety of reasons, including past experiences of dieting and restricting, which can lead to disordered eating.

But if you find your current eating habits aren’t supporting your health goals, where should you start if you want to make a change?

There are two things you can do for a more life-giving way to eat healthier:

1) Replace, don’t restrict

Different diets will often ask us to give up our favorite foods, leaving us feeling restricted and typically MORE tempted to eat those very foods!  This gets us into a cycle of restricting and later binging because we feel so restricted.

Instead of taking something completely off the table, first think about WHY you like eating or drinking it.  What does it do for you?  Does it help you in some way?

Once you’ve figured that out, start thinking about other food or drinks that may help you get the same thing, and also help you move forward with your health.

For some replacement ideas, check out this article and this infographic from Precision Nutrition.

2) Add, don’t subtract

In keeping with the “no restriction” idea, think about adding more nutrient dense foods to your meals, rather than taking away certain foods.  Often when you start filling up on things like fruits and vegetables, you don’t have as much room for the foods you’re trying to eat less of.

It is possible to eat and drink in a way that supports your health AND feels life-giving.  Instead of restrict and subtract, think replace and add.

Photo Credits:
Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash
Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash