By Sajeev Nair
New Year resolutions are powerful in words but not often in deeds, as most of us have painfully discovered for ourselves. Yet a New Year is such a momentous occasion that is brimming with so much of new energy and positivity that it would be a deep loss in opportunity not to have a powerful new resolution for the new year. And what better domain to have a new year resolution than in healthy eating, which along with optimum sleep and adequate exercise, is a pillar of health, wellness and longevity. Here are some insightful tips into how to make and not break your new year resolution for healthy eating.
Make Sure You Are Fully Convinced
The neuroscience behind the difficulty in making new good habits and breaking old bad habits says that often the culprit is your lack of belief. Not that you don’t believe unhealthy eating is bad for you or that healthy eating will do you good, but that you don’t believe that it would make such a difference as to justify foregoing your favourite dishes. Or in other words, you think that you can get away with a fair bit of unhealthy eating. This faulty belief should be changed first for your new resolution to stick. My book on biohacking, ‘The Making of a Superhuman’ has a whole chapter dedicated to this psychological hack. As I state it there, what the brain believes only, it follows.
Make Sure You Know Your Own Body’s Needs
Most people don’t realize that when it comes to making new year resolutions for healthy eating, they are overdoing the resolution part and setting themselves up for failure within a few weeks or even a few days. While excess sugar, salt, fat, refined foods, red meat etc. are not good for our health, no one in this world can cut them all at once one fine morning, even if that morning is January 1. And the good news is that most people don’t need to cut all of them mercilessly. Take for example, the twin evils of salt and sugar. People target both simultaneously to pre-empt diabetes and hypertension, but that takes away the taste of pretty much everything, and soon a failed resolution will be staring at them. Far better would be to assess your genetic and metabolic risks for developing such lifestyle diseases so that you know which ingredient to cut seriously and which you can take in moderation. Today such geno-metabolic testing and personalized diets based on it are available in India too.
Make Sure Your Diet Delivers Fast
People go for a walk, and instantly feel good. But when they cut down on food they like, they end up feeling bad. Unlike in exercise, this feel good factor is sorely missing in most of the so-called healthy diets. That is why your diet needs to deliver near instantaneous results by way of more energy, better mood, less bloating, optimum satiety, less craving etc. Only truly personalized diets can deliver such fast results. This is because such diets are based on the science of nutrigenomics, which is the way in which our genes affect the metabolism of our foods, and in turn how our foods affect our genetic expression. So, while many diets today claim to be personalized, it is always better to go for a diet that is based on nutrigenomics. The first step to identify such a diet is by checking whether it is based on your genetic testing, and also by checking whether the service indeed delivers nutrigenomics based diets.
Make Sure You Reward Yourself
Like in building any good habits, for a new resolution to end up as a lasting habit, you need to reward yourself frequently. Completed one week of your new year resolution? Treat yourself to a Netflix series or a spa treatment or a new dress or something like that you find rewarding. Gift yourself bigger presents when you complete one month, three months and so on. If you have a partner or lifestyle coach who can track your progress, and gifts you, it is even better. Another powerful way to reward yourself is to do it every time you lose two 2 or 3 kgs of excess weight, or when your HbA1c, blood pressure reading, or VO2 Max or such health markers cross milestones. It may surprise you to know that today there are blockchain based wellness ecosystems that actually reward you in cryptocurrencies for achieving such lifestyle modification milestones under the guidance of a lifestyle coach.
(Sajeev Nair is the author of the bestselling biohacking book, ‘The Making of a Superhuman’, and the Founder of Vieroots Wellness Solutions that pioneered EPLIMO, the geno-metabolic testing and lifestyle modification solution. His latest project Limoverse rewards users with cryptos for undertaking both fitness and dietary modifications.)
