>>14001>what are your tips for starting and maintaining this lifestyle?JOURNALING! there are different ways to go about this, but this helped me:
on the first day of your journaling adventure, you live as you normally would (without worrying about thinking you should eat better) because you want to get an overview of how your current eating pattern is
so, during the day, write down everything you eat (be honest and don't skip anything, don't be ashamed of your diet but look at it as motivation to improve yourself)
at the end of the first day you have a clear overview of where you stand
now you will notice which foods you eat too much, too little, just enough…. but you will also notice that there may be certain things missing in your diet
at this point you don't have to make any changes to your diet yet, in fact I advise you to live and eat for a whole week as you normally would and write everything down without making any changes to live a 'better and healthier' life'. that way you get a clear weekly overview of your eating pattern
but I also advise you to write down your findings after each day of that first week. What do you notice? what do you eat a lot of, where are you doing well, what do you eat too little of? and so on. In the meantime, you can also look up things about healthier eating and write down everything in your diary that you think is useful. you can also fantasize about what your ideal eating pattern looks like on a daily or weekly basis. for example, how much meat or vegetables you should eat and up to how many sweets you can consume per day and how many glasses of water you should be drinking
after a week you have recorded your eating pattern, you have collected information and you have written down what you can best work on and what you are already doing well
so, now improvement, where do you start first? You have to feel this yourself, of course. choose something that seems most doable to you. For example, if you choose to work on something you eat too much of, I don't recommend cutting it out of your life completely, don't go cold turkey (like sugar). then especially look at your starting position and gradually tapering off until you get to the point you want to reach.
It is important that you write down your goals so that you do not forget exactly what you are working on.
it is also important to write down why you want to eat healthier, because on bad days (we all have them) and eating healthier gets harder, you can read it again for motivation.
something else that you can gradually build up if it's not in your routine (for example exercise) then you have to build this up gradually here too (for example once a week do something that is doable for you, maybe use a free app)
The advantage of journaling is that you always keep an overview of what you do. this way you can see how you have evolved over time. you get to know yourself and your eating pattern better. For example, write down the reason why you eat less or more that day. Did something happen that triggered your eating pattern? after a year you can see where you stand compared to your starting position and hopefully look back with pride and be grateful to yourself that you kept going and to still keep your journal the next year, but maybe not as intensely as in the beginning because you have already made a habit of many things.
I wish you a lot of courage and self improvement
