Читать книгу Clean Eating Alice Eat Well Every Day: Nutritious, healthy recipes for life on the go - Alice Liveing - Страница 14

You’ve identified some good foundations from which you can begin to incorporate sustainable changes to your lifestyle. But first, let me explain where my approach comes from. The world we live in constantly instils in us that instant gratification is the norm. We have become accustomed to everything happening at the click of our fingers and you only need to flick through a few glossy magazines to be told that you can get abs in six weeks, and that diet shakes will apparently provide you with the correct nourishment over real food. I’ve spoken at length throughout my journey about how drastic diets and extreme measures – the whole ‘no pain no gain’ approach, although they may be incredibly motivating in the short term and provide quick results, simply aren’t sustainable for a long period of time. In my opinion, they can be mentally and physically damaging.

Dieting on very low calories is likely to leave you with some sort of nutritional deficiency. It’s incredibly difficult to consume enough of all the vital macro and micronutrients you need for basic health and hormonal function when you are restricting yourself in this extreme way. Your body can take a real hit, and dramatically reducing your calories creates an increase in the body’s production of the hormone ghrelin, as well as others. These hormones are the hunger hormones, sending signals to your brain to tell you you’re hungry. This therefore can mean that as soon as the ‘diet’ ends, you can feel an excessive desire to eat more than you need, therefore succumbing to a rebound period in which binging or over-eating can then occur, creating the yo-yo diet effect that we so often see.

Most importantly, the most worrying result of these crash diets is the effect they have on your relationship with food. It is my belief that food isn’t just fuel; it should be enjoyed and not just seen as sustenance. Entertaining fad diets or low-calorie restriction merely serves the purpose of showing that if you eat a very small amount of food you will achieve fat loss – but what lessons are then learned? Seeing quick results can often lead you to then fear increasing your calories once a plan has finished, resulting in a cycle of miserable restriction. It isn’t normal and it can’t last; we need good food to survive and thrive. One thing I want each and every one of you to tell yourself on a daily basis while using this book is that: You are in this for the long term. If you truly want to make change, forget magic-wand quick fixes and place your energies in believing that slow and steady changes, where you learn to eat in a sustainable, flexible and enjoyable manner, will ultimately provide you with the healthiest and longest-lasting results. It will allow you to eat a varied diet – full of goodness, but full of interesting food combinations so that you never feel bored or uninspired to try something new.

Over the next few pages I will share my top tips for week two and beyond. This is where we want to begin to make small changes to enable lifelong results. Write these down in your diary, stick them on your fridge or pop them next to your bed, so that you are gently reminding yourself of this week’s goals.