Why Is Healthy Eating So Hard?

Planning and following through. Anytime we travel or have a shift in schedule eating goes out the door. I need to keep a list of regulars that I can turn to during busy times.

I dont find healthy eating hard at all as I love all the good food that you can have however it is adding in the extra goodies on top like the odd choccie bar so temptations i guess – will power to say no or knowing when to stop and have just one chunk as a treat!

It is hard because healthy eating is kind of expensive. It is so much cheaper to grab the unhealthy food because of cost. I now realize that is why the people with lower income are more overweight. I didn’t used to understand that concept. I always thought, if you don’t have as much money how can you afford to eat so much? But now I truly understand and sometimes feel like it is a conspiracy against those less fortunate. If you think about it, those who can only afford the cheap, fattening foods, that become obese and overweight will basically be killing off themselves and keeping themselves in debt. The debt comes due to medical bills they can’t afford due to all the physical problems that come from weight issues also. We as a nation need to become more health conscious all the way around not just to those who can afford to be. I know there is a free market to business so McDonalds and all the perpetrators and preditors of of the world have the opportunity to make money, but it has just gotten out of hand and no one wants to put the blame where it originates. Of course, we as people have the right and obligation to make healthy choices for ourselves, but when you feel the quick, cheap and fattening is the only thing you can afford, for you and your children something needs to change elsewhere.

It’s getting together at friends’ places and only being offered non-supportive foods.

Who wants to eat light & cold (salads and fruit) in the winter. What we want is warm wholesome hearty foods, its human nature. Also, no matter how good the family is generally, try telling 2 teenage boys to choose a healthy option over fuel/stodge and try sitting in front of them whilst they are eating what THEY want!

What makes eating the “healthier” foods harder for me is at dinner time. We are a family of 5 and eating chicken breasts, seafood, and turkey are very expensive meats.

We don’t fry our foods (if we do any frying it is usually french fries or tater tots; but there again it is only MAYBE once a month because we usually bake ours). We have more ground beef or red meat items in our house, because we purchase half a cow from our cousins and then have it processed. So our beef is lean, but it is what we mostly consume in a weeks time.

I do try to get a seafood meal, a pork meal and 1 or 2 chicken meals in our weekly meals that I plan. (I plan an entire months worth of meals then get the groceries, and only go back to the store weekly for perishables).

This month I have cut out more potatoes and added more pasta meals (I am not sure if that was wise; because again I couldn’t get the WW pasta because of the price); and also changed the canned vegetables to green leafy salads that have to prepared that day for dinner.

The price you pay for eating healthier is ridiculous and hard to do with such a large family; keep in mind now that I have a teenager and she eats as much as my husband so a 6oz fillet of cod will not be enough for them.

I’ll be really good for the entire week and then I’ll make something for my husband and I’ll say I’ll have one as my PI and then I can’t help but crave more which I justify the same way as Stephanie, that it’s a PI – I can have more, and then later that I’ve already screwed up I might as well make it good and have more. Then it seems like a couple days before I get back on track. I need to stop giving in to those cravings. It’s very hard having a very fit and thin husband who eats whatever he wants and not being able to share what he’s having.

I have really bad eating habits. I tend not to eat regularly. I’m a receptionist who eats breakfast, lunch at 12 which takes me forever to eat. I never finish it during my lunchbreak I’m an extremely slow eater. I bowl 4 evenings a week. So when knock off at 5, I get home at 6 and I’m making 6:45 to the bowling alley and finish at 10pm I don’t eat anything till the next morning.
So I’m not snacking, or losing weight I’m not eating properly.

What makes it hard for me to eat the right foods is literally cravings for the “bad” stuff. There are days where sweets is all I want then it’s salt or spicy stuff. It is difficult to “not” eat these types of foods given the huge variety of them available to you on a discounted price tag. Wholesome and healthy foods are hard to buy when they are out of season or you may consider growing them yourself. I have contemplated buying a freezer to keep fruits all year long. I still have to learn how to eat most veggies – yup I don’t think they are my friend and have a hard time getting the nerve to eat some of them. I just keep trying each day to eat the right things for my body and what it needs to reshape to how I want it to be. I hope this helps someone.

Basicly, I hate the grocery store. I was single for a long time. I would buy fresh produce and it would go bad before I could eat it unless I went every 3 days or so. The labels on the foods are so confusing!! I end up grabbing as I go. Hot Dog at Quiktrip…because it is warm with diet coke. Lunch would be usually fast food. Dinner was beer and chicken wings Now I am trying for protein shake or ceral..but it is cold. Lunch a salad from the salad bar that the local grocery store..but I hate the grocery store. Dinner doing very well at sticking to a protein and veges. It is easier now that I am engaged because he goes to the grocery store and I make the list

My husband! Even though he is working on losing weight also, if we go out, he always wants to go someplace like Mexican where I can’t leave the chips and salsa alone. If we are at a restaurant and I suggest we split a grilled chicken and veggie salad, he will counter with splitting a bacon cheeseburger and fries. I have to decide to make my own path and order what know is right and leave him to make his own bad decisions.

So many reasons why eating healthy can be hard … just depends on the day or week! …

-$
-having healthy options on hand
-shopping for individual healthy ingredients
-not sure how to put healthy foods together that taste good
-I’m not a very good cook
-need a dish that the whole family will eat
-need FAST options for breakfast and lunches (and some dinners, too)
-snacks/grab and go items might not be as healthy as they should be
-cravings for foods that might not be really UNhealthy, but they cause me to crave other unhealthy options (e.g., pita chips)
-not eating enough in the beginning of the day… leads to hunger and eating more toward the end of the day
-husband might choose not-so-healthy options when he goes to the store.. and when we eat out, he might want me to share an appetizer with him. Not too many restaurants have healthy app options!
-eating out
-my laziness when it comes to cooking
-need a meal plan based on healthy foods that I like/already have
-when I don’t track my foods, I tend to eat more and feel out of control

For me, I have totally tried to commit to eating healthy and eliminate certain “junk” from my diet. One of those “junk” foods I have tried to eliminate is “high fructose corn syrup”. This is amazingly hard because it seems to be in EVERYTHING! I have been eating hard boiled eggs for breakfast and love having worcherstershire sauce with it, to my surprise I looked at the ingredients this morning, and VOILA there it was staring me in the face! Yikes! Farewell to my tasty sauce with my eggs, it was nice knowing you (not), but how can I get my sexy flat tummy back with you in my life??

The hardest part of healthy eating for me is that my husband burns calories like a furnace and eats all kinds of junk food. I do the grocery shopping so I never buy any but he will pick it up on his way home from work and munch at night.
I have found that if I constantly imagine what those garbage foods will do to me – not just in terms of weight gain but the real damage processed foods do that we CAN’T see – then I can often convince myself that I don’t want a handful of chips.
If I cave and grab just one – then I’m toast. If they weren’t in the house, I wouldn’t be eating any – nor would I be tempted.

For me eating healthy is easy but I find that I wimp out and feed my family whatever is easy and not that good for you because I dont want the fight to get my kids and my husband to eat the healthy food. My children are very picky eaters and fight me on everything. I have been trying to get our houshold to eat healthy for years but this year my husband is on board because he wants to lose weight too this time. We have decided to take a strong front with our children so that they dont end up like us over weight and unhealthy so if they dont eat the food we give them it is wrapped up and kept till they decide that they are hungry enough to eat it. May sound harsh but I dont want them to have the same weight problems my husband and I have had for our lives both starting in our childhood. We have been doing this for a couple weeks and it seems to be working so far so onward we go…..

For me I have two battles.

1. I am the pickiest eater. I eat by texture as well as taste. ie. my fruit is limited to apples, oranges and bananas. I don’t like ANY type of berry or melon. same for veggies – lettuce, green beans and corn. I can gag down broccoli stems, but can’t handle the florets. And don’t even mention tomatoes to me. crazy I KNOW. I’ve been like this my whole life. I get tired of the same old foods, but I can’t help it.

2. I crave and I mean CRAVE carbs. Cereal, bread and potatoes – OH MY. I could live off of cold cereal and milk. So naturally, without even thinking, I reach for carbs when I’m hungry. That is my default food.

Planning and having things on hand work well for me, as long as I don’t get lazy and just reach for a bowl of cereal rather than make a salad or make a healthy lunch.

well, it isn’t just about eating. Its about all the prep or lack of it. Planning is my biggest problem. I planned this week, shopped and now I have good halthy food in my kitchen. It wasn’t that I had bad food before, there just was no food! I am tracking what I eat on vitabot ,and Idon’t eat enough by a long shot. When I am stressed, I just won’t eat because nothing looks good. Having planned meals in the fridge does help with this dilemma. if I have good food, then I likely will eat it.
For me its all about planning.

Cooking it takes way too long. Comfort foods can be cooked up in a huge batch on Sunday… but sauteed zucchini? Really doesn’t taste good two days old. Plus, when I get home after a twelve hour day I’m so tired I don’t want to deal with all the chopping…. and my husband agrees to eat healthy in principle, but he’s in the same situation when he gets home. We’re both just ready to eat.

For me it’s cooking. For example chicken is very supportive right, well I find it very bland and yes there are tons of recipes out there for chicken but my husband is very fussy and doesn’t like a lot of spices or flavoring or any type of onion which I love cooked with my food. So it’s easy simple recipes I need but have a hard time finding so my husband will eat with me. I guess another thing is I have a hard time figuring out portion control since veggies don’t leave me feeling full I try to eat more meat. Eating more often would probably help but I get sidetracked with feeding the kids and by the time I would sit one is finished or needs a new diaper. You’d think it would be easy to eat when you’re feeding the kids but at the age their at it’s not. I know this will get easier as they’re older though plus no one can change that but me.

Not sure how to put healthy meals together that I can cook. I tend to grill meat and roast veggies and this gets very very boring. My family doesn’t like that so I have to make a separate meal for them. Eating just becomes a drudgery. Wish I had reliable recipes that the whole family loved!

Healthy eating is not necessarily more expensive. You have to shop the sales. It may take a little more time but it’s an investment in your health that is worth it. Eating out is very expensive. Even if your husband or children don’t need to lose weight they do need to be healthy which includes exercise and healthy eating. Illnesses (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol) don’t happen over night. They develop over time because of unhealthy eating habits and inactivity. If family history enters into the picture, even more reason to change poor habits. Eat to live don’t live to eat. It’s your (and your family’s) health – take charge of it.

Planning as such is a difficult thing for me. I am having trouble planning meals because I have to plan for my family (they are on a regular diet) and for me. It is quite difficult to cook two kind of meals simultaneously. Shopping is all right as long as I do the shopping becuase I tend to stack up on the food I can eat.

As my family, especially my husband eats the food I love (sweets) Even though I love my diet foods as well, it is hard to stick to my diet plan when I can see that the others eat my favourite meals.

Healthy eating is difficult for several reasons:
1. Expensive. To keep the fridge stocked with good fruits and veggies all week costs a lot more than to have a box of crackers or granola bars in the cupboard. Not every family can afford organic products or ones that focus on natural oppposed to refined and processed.
2. I find that a fruit does not fill me up for very long. I also find that there is not as much variety in eating healthy, which bores my tastebuds and makes me crave SUGAR.
3. Time consuming. It’s easier to meal plan with my tried and true recipes (you know…the ones that have whipping cream, cream soups – the things that are bad for you) than to come up with creative, healthy alternatives. Fish and chicken end up bland when you eat it the same way most meals. And who wants a salad everynight with just oil and vinegar?
4. Kids….they demand so much of your time (and money) that it’s often easier to buy that already prepared chicken; those cheaper yogurts…..

These are not excuces for poor eating. It’s reality. It’s a constant challenge to chose the right foods.

I try very hard to eat healthy, but sometimes because of lack of time I grab a snack that is not so healthy eat.
At home I prepare healthy food for my husband and children. I skip meals sometimes because of my schedule.

Pure laziness and expense. These are two very poor excuses. I know that if I were to sit down and stop procrastinating by making an actual weekly plan, the healthy eating would happen and it wouldn’t be expensive anymore because I wouldn’t be buying all the foods that aren’t good for you.