[VIDEO] Brisbane | Scrap the Diets! Here’s How to Make 2018 a Healthier, Happier Year
By Shannon Edwards // Place New Farm
Hands up if you’ve ever made a new year’s resolution you haven’t stuck to? We sure have!
“New year, new me” - we’ve all said it before.
Is your focus for the new year to be healthier and happier?
Forget daily weigh-ins, painful exercise and fad diets, it’s time to view ‘healthy’ in a different way this year.
We sat down with dietitian Kate Pollard from Brisbane’s Centre of Integrative Health where she shared some important tips on how to REALLY be the healthiest version of yourself.
5 tips to be happier and healthier in 2018:
1. Ditch the scales
Swap weight loss goals for other more helpful measures such as improving energy levels,
nourishing your body, engaging in joyful movement
2. Choose self care over punishment and deprivation
If you want to make healthy choices, it’s more helpful to do this from of self care rather than punishment.
Instead of punishing yourself with exercise you hate and restricting your food intake in the short term only to rebound with binge eating and weight regain, perhaps you’d like to try some of these self care ideas instead:
- · Bring lunch to work more often
- · Think and speak positive about your body
- · Reduce caffeine intake (might help your budget too!)
- · Engage in movement you enjoy (as opposed to for the purpose of calorie burning or punishment)
- · Make homemade meals more often
3. Resolve to never diet again
We know diets don’t work, evidence clearly shows this.
Instead of starting another weight loss diet and only blaming yourself when it (inevitably) doesn’t work, learn how to understand your body. This may include what we call ‘intuitive eating’.
Intuitive eating is a nutrition philosophy based around becoming more attuned to the body's natural hunger, rather than following another meal plan.
4. Count your blessings instead of calories
The act of practising gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness.
Appreciating what we have in our lives, instead of always wanting more and never feeling satisfied