Eating healthy can be quite tricky as what’s healthy is subjective and a lot depends on the reasoning behind eating healthy. Of course, it is best if your choices are based on knowledge and a desire to BE healthy. I strongly believe that then, ideal weight, healthy outlook on life and emotional balance will follow. But I also know that for many of us, eating healthy is also a way to keep your ideal weight, and it can be very demotivating if the results are not what you had hoped for.

So let’s see what some of the reasons can be!

Overeating

Personally, I struggle the most with eating too much, even if the food is healthy. There are many reasons for overeating, some we had already talked about, such as not being present, not taking the time to chew your food properly (not chewing properly means that digestive enzymes are not released and our brain doesn’t register that we are eating, then the hunger doesn’t stop) and not knowing what meal will make you happy at a given time.

I also find that tracking micro/macronutrients can put you in a position of eating too much or not enough to meet a certain “criteria”. Don’t forget the law of energy conservation: if you eat more calories than you spend, the calories will be deposited in the form of extra kilograms. However, keep in mind that if the calorie deficit is too low your body goes into starvation mode quicker. The result? Holding onto fat and no weight loss.

So what can you do to not overeat? You have to be especially careful with high-calorie snacks such as nuts or whole-grain products. It’s better to stop eating before you get “full”, as feeling heavy and full means you have eaten too much. It usually takes some time for the digestive process to signal that we are good to go and no longer hungry. Also, you have to know your eating patterns. If you know that you can get emotional hunger, have nutritious snacks (carrots, celery, apples) prepared, such snacks don’t steal the thunder of your well-deserved lunch or dinner.

Metabolism

Have you ever reflected on what your metabolism is like? Just like any other process of our system, metabolism is always trying to adapt to our regime and diet. This means that if you eat too little food (because you are on a diet), your metabolism will slow down and use as much/little energy to metabolise that food. The inevitable will happen, and the metabolic rate will drop below the optimal level. Once a strict diet becomes too boring and you “slip”, the body does not have time to adapt the metabolic rate to the new volumes of incoming calories resulting in weight gain. It is quite simple, and this is why if you are looking to maintain a certain weight, you should never diet to get there. It’s better to invest in building a lifestyle where your desired weight will be the norm, and you don’t have to exhaust yourself with dieting. 

Is this all that I should know about metabolism? Well, nop.

Just like your metabolism will speed up or slow down depending on how much you eat, it also takes a lot less time to metabolise familiar foods. If your diet is full of a little bit of everything, then having a slice of good quality pizza now and then won’t be a problem because your metabolism is not shocked by the news!

Stress

Let’s talk about stress.

Stress hormone cortisol has a direct effect on our metabolism and weight gain. That’s why it’s very important to have your cortisol level in check, you can be eating the healthiest diet and being mindful not to overeat, yet nothing happens. First of all, being too strict with your diet also induces cortisol overproduction as you literally stress yourself out about it. Also, it turns out that cortisol release is caused not only by emotional but also by physiological stress, such as, for example, long (from 40 minutes) cardio workouts. So you had a long, intense workout that induced cortisol rise. Sneaky cortisol will negatively affect blood sugar levels and cause excessive food cravings for high-calorie food. All you will want to do after such a workout is eat, since you have burned many calories, you are more likely to overeat as your body needs to regain lost energy fast…and the loop starts. Therefore, eating healthy has to be combined with a workout that makes you happy and not stressed! Short  20-30 minutes, high-intensity interval training is much more effective and, conversely, helps us to lose weight than an exhausting 40 minutes cardio session.  

These are some basics you should know about. We will cover specific disbalances that can cause a standstill and what a balanced diet should look like in the near future. However, if you are sure that you are making your best effort to eat healthy and the above information is nothing new to you, it could be a good time to talk to a professional to see the reasons behind it. It could be connected to mental, emotional, genetic or situational factors that you don’t know about yet.