Maintaining a healthy diet is key to living a good life and improving one’s lifestyle. Nutritionists recommend so many healthy diet options and recipes and most of them have proven to help so many people achieve their weight loss as well as training goals. Also, some of these recipes can be expensive and if you decide to opt for any of the already made healthy diets, it can be expensive, especially when you are unsure of what will work for you best.
However, with enough research and studies, one can find most of what consists of a healthy diet and how to incorporate them into their lives, according to https://www.crownhealth.ch/blogs/blog/healthy-diet-is-easy-7-most-common-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them. So much information exist online on balanced diets, talking about what works and what doesn’t, and so people often make a lot of mistakes trying to adopt every single one of them.
I have done a bit of research myself and found some of the myths about creating a healthy diet and identified most mistakes people make trying to follow most of them. In this post, you will learn about my findings and see how you can avoid making these same mistakes of believing in such myths about a healthy diet.
1) You Do Not Need Calories, Just Eat/Drink Lots of Protein
Protein is great for your body because it aids in tissue and muscle repairs, however, high-protein diets take too long to get digested by the body and this can become more of an unhealthy diet option. Popular trends in weight loss and muscle gain always find a way to link no calories to healthy eating, but they tend to miss a very vital point which is that carbs are essential for the body to function properly.
You see, our body needs energy in order for us to carry on our daily activities. The body is able to generate the energy it needs by processing certain nutrients in the foods that we eat and produce non-carbohydrate carbon substrates that contain carbs, proteins, fats, etc. The result of the processed substrates is glucose which is then converted to energy and stored in our muscles and brain.
Fun fact: A high-proteinous diet can actually make you gain weight.
So, if you want to prepare a meal that can be considered healthy, it should consist of proteins, fruits or vegetables, and of course carbohydrates.
2) Only Choose and Eat the Right Foods
Eating the same foods over and over again defeats the purpose of having a healthy diet. For one, a healthy diet suggests a balanced diet which means eating a variety of different foods in the right proportions.
A proper diet plan takes into consideration the number of calories you need every day depending on your goals. And then, you can choose from each food group to ensure you are getting all the nutrients necessary. Pick healthy foods and not junks.
Having to eat a healthy diet does not mean you get to deny yourself some of the foods you like to eat. That said, discipline is required to stay true to your diet plan and not overindulge on any particular food.
3) Healthy Diet But No Diet Plan
Knowing all the right things to eat and the perfect diet alone does nothing to impact the change you need in your body if you do not have a healthy eating plan or follow through with one. As you search for a healthy diet, you should also endeavor to plan your meals, when to eat and how to hydrate properly.
When planning your diet, you can ask yourself a few questions to help you clearly understand your goals;
- What changes can you make at this moment to what you are already eating?
- If and when you decide to make these changes, how do you intend to maintain them?
- Will these changes impact your relationships?
These questions will help you understand your limits and help you devise a clear plan to work around them. The reason this step is very much important is that you need to have a full understanding of what you are getting yourself into and maintain a resolve to stick with it. Also, you will need to incorporate this new culture with your present situation to make it liveable.
It is also important that after you have clearly answered these questions, you set small but practical goals for yourself and focus on sticking to them. Start your healthy eating plan small, adapt to the changes in your body and improve as each day passes. You will also be met with some challenges, which is why your goals should first be small and realistic, that way you stand a chance to not give up before you have even started.
4) Not Seeking Advice or Support From Professional Nutritionists/Coaches and Dieticians
Like I mentioned earlier in this post, many people tend to believe anything they read online, and in as much as most of the information they come across provides some value, one still requires professional opinion to validate some of these claims or at best help in crafting a proper expectation.
If you don’t have a personal nutritionist or know of any coach that can help you in your healthy eating journey, you can always ask your physician to recommend one for you.
5) When You Eat Too Much After Training, Even Fruits
Fruits contain a healthy amount of fiber, minerals and vitamins, water, and of course simple sugars. So, when you consume lots of fruits, you are simply ingesting more sugars than your body needs at that particular time, which is not good for your healthy eating goals.
When you train, you burn fat, expel energy and lose body fluids. However, post-workout/training meals should be light and only full of nutrients you require to replenish the energy and fluids lost, heal your muscles and help in recovering other functions of the body.
Eating plenty of food after workout renders all of your efforts in vain, all that stress and strain to your body and muscles will be filled with food that the body cannot digest quickly, and they will be stored as fat in the body.
You can improve your diet and lifestyle by avoiding the mistakes listed here and following some of the advise too. In any case, this post does not nearly cover all of the misconceptions and mistakes people have been lead to make by believing everything they read online. The main thing here is that now you know they exist, and you can keep an eye out!