With a new year, comes an opportunity to cultivate a fresh mindset around how we fuel our bodies and our minds. Food shouldn’t be a source of worry – but rather a source of feeling good. Ask yourself, is your mindset biggest thing holding you back from your health goals?

Is your mindset biggest thing holding you back from your health goals?

It’s a valuable exercise to check in with our attitude towards your relationship with food, and figure out if it’s supporting or hindering the progress on your health journey. We know it can be easy to start stressing about how the food we eat is impacting our health especially when there is so much choice, however, this is counteractive, even when we have the best intentions.

Realigning yourself by shifting your relationship with food to one of overall nourishment for the body and the mind can be game changing in relation to taking charge of your wellness. You should feel empowered when making food choices – not feeling like you’re missing out!

“The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” – Ann Wigmore

Our BePure Holistic Health Consultant, Helen Duyvestyn, is particularly passionate about the way our mindset influences our approach to cultivating our wellbeing and making the process an easy and enjoyable as possible.

These are Helen’s 5 mindset hacks around food choices, to support you in reaching your health goals:

1. Use your words

Have a play with changing the words around the food you choose to eat. Instead of, “I shouldn’t have…” try, "I choose not to eat.... because you are on a health journey and this will be best for you in the long term". Consider how every meal is an opportunity to nourish your incredible body!

Emphasise how you are actively choosing to be well. "I am choosing to do all this so that I get to enjoy a long life of health and happiness." Wellness is about abundance, not deprivation. Have a play with this concept. Words can make a big difference in our mind!

2. Keep it simple

Having too much choice can be yet another source of stress, and sucks the joy out of food. Keep it super simple by having a small collection of go-to recipes made up of nourishing foods you love and enjoy on rotation. Having three recipes for breakfast, and three for dinner (which can also serve as leftovers for lunch the next day!), which you can create slight variations of allows you to keep a sense of peace and enjoyment around the foods you eat.

3. Snack Box

I often suggest to people to have a get a 'snack box' which lives in the fridge and is only for you to eat. Fill it in with lovely things such as hummus, dairy-free pesto, dried meats, pickles – which you can snack on if the need arises you had nutritious options all ready to go that won’t send your blood sugars on a rampant rollercoaster ride.

4. Journal for joy

Sit down one evening this week and write a list of at least of ten things that bring you joy. These can be very simple but are particularly personal to you – food, activities, people etc. If coffee is one of them – that is okay – but make sure when you are drinking coffee, you acknowledge that this is something that you really enjoy (often we drink it and don't even notice that we have had it.)

Best Possible Self Exercise I really love this exercise. It can help keep us focused in the short-term when trying to obtain longer-term goals. It helps to change our mindset and make nourishing choices – because we know it helps us to get to our longer-term goal.

5. Take time out

Make time each day to take a break. This can be from your list of things which give you joy – or simply five minutes with your feet up, listening to a podcast, app, music or bird song (or the sound of silence!) It’s common for us to make food choices when we’re stressed – in which case we tend to rush and grab foods that aren’t necessarily the most nourishing.

Taking five minutes out lets our minds settle and recalibrate. When we have a busy mind, our stress hormone, cortisol increases, and when cortisol increases, so does insulin, the fat storage hormone. If healthy weight is one of your health goals, bringing more calm into your day will be hugely beneficial.