How to train your brain to prefer healthy food

Keeping a journal opens your eyes

You cannot change what you are not aware of. Therefore, write down in a diary what you eat, in what quantity, at what time and what is your mood when you do it. Only then will you really know if you peck a lot, if you seek refuge in food when you have a dislike or are stressed, etc.

Practice the STOP

When the urge to eat leads you to want to open a bag of potato chips… Stop, don't open the pantry yet. Take a minute to breathe or count from 100 to 0 to contain the urge. Observe your body and distinguish if your stomach is crumbling or it is your mind that asks you to eat to relieve a pain. If it's really hungry, eat, but if not, answer the mobile, go for a walk, etc.

Shift the focus of what you like

Look for the bad in the dishes you like and the good in the ones you are not enthusiastic about. Instead of remembering how delicious it is to dip bread in some fried eggs, think about how oily they are, how they cause you heaviness … Instead, get enthusiastic about the creamy texture of the avocado in the salad, at the salty point of adding pipes … Your brain will save this information to make healthier choices another day.

Eat mindfully

So that when your brain receives the signal that the stomach is already full you have not swallowed amounts of food without rhyme or reason, eat consciously. Look first at the composition of the plate, at the colors … Then identify the different aromas it gives off. Take a bite to your mouth and notice the texture of the food, if it crunchy or not, if it is fluffy. Afterwards, taste it trying to differentiate the different ingredients and tastes (spicy, sour, salty…).

Sit with the slow

The brain learns by imitation, so if you sit with people who eat slowly, you will eat more slowly, chewing more. What do you gain from it? In addition to better digestion, you also get to eat less, because it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to receive the signal that it is already satiated.

Things have to be earned

Burn it up in your head. Craving a scrumptious meal? Well, nothing to call a food delivery service, since surely you ask for more, letting yourself be carried away by the gulita. Open the fridge (where there should only be healthy food) and let's cook! And since the brain is comfortable, surely your recipes will be simple, but delicious and more balanced than what you could order outside.

Take breaks

In order not to overeat, take breaks between bites, leaving the cutlery on the table, taking a quiet sip of water … Halfway through the meal, put down the cutlery and wait between 5 and 10 minutes to decide whether to continue. being hungry and you finish the second course. Do the same between the second and the dessert. Nothing happens if you don't take the fruit then, you can leave it for mid-afternoon.

Name your hunger

If behind your "addiction" to chocolate hides an unresolved emotion, if that extra piece of pizza is calming the anxiety about not being able to leave the house … instead of eating, write a diary in which you name what you corrodes inside. Expressing your emotions will make it easier for you to solve your problems and you will avoid using food as a "pain reliever".

Sleep so your brain can rest

If you don't rest, reaching out for a muffin or ice cream is almost an automatism, because your brain seeks to compensate for the "low" with foods rich in calories. Therefore, getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night is essential. If you can't, take a 20-minute nap to make up for it. Don't miss our tricks to sleep like a baby and rest peacefully.

Look for moments of relief

Stress is another of the triggers of emotional hunger. These days of confinement are going to stress us a lot. To combat it, exercise at home, read, play something fun with your family, make a video call with your friends or dance at home. It doesn't matter what, but that you like it so much that it helps you disconnect from everything for a long time.

No matter how in a hurry, be selective

You are overwhelmed, with nothing prepared and your mind tells you to fix dinner quickly so you can rest. This ends in cutting sausage and cheese, and you go. Stop these foods and, without changing the chip to do something fast, introduce the software of the right choice: for example, bread spread with queso fresco or avocado, smoked salmon and fresh spinach or arugula. Fast, light and healthy.

Actively seek joy

The best antidote to "eating your grief", which can literally lead you to gobble down a box of cookies, is to do something that really fills you with joy. It can be playing with the children, watching a comedy series, calling a friend, dancing like crazy in your living room or playing karaoke until you lose your voice… Don't expect good things to come to you, provoke them.

Let's face it, it is easy that during quarantine we prefer a salad to a cheeseburger and fries of those homemade, with its skin and its crunchy … Lettuce does not make us salivate the same, but … we can get it. Yes, as you read it, we can "program" our brain to make choices that help us lose weight (and without the need for electroshocks, we promise).

What if it's not hunger? What if it's something else?

And it is that behind many of the choices we make in food, there may be other motivations not directly related to what we put into our mouths. Many times we “swallow our nerves”, “we eat disappointments with potatoes” or “we rejoice with a sweet”.

And the thing is that real hunger is one thing, that of the stomach that crackles because it needs you to add something to it after empty hours, and quite another, emotional hunger, which is very likely to appear in times of uncertainty and confinement like the one that we are living.

How do you know if you are really hungry?

Easy. There is a method that never fails. To find out if it is hunger or something else, think about whether you would eat a plate of sautéed chard or if you need “something else”, call it chocolate, ice cream, pizza, bun, potato chips …

The first option, don't be fooled, is that of real hunger. You know, the hunger that makes you "eat the stones", the chard, the broccoli or whatever they put ahead of you. The other is gulita, it is the choice of a capricious brain that has learned to "cover" other emotions with food.

Food as a prize

And it's not that your brain is always positioned against you. It is that it is what he has learned because, when you were little, your mother would put you on her chest and hug you, smile at you while you suckled, give you warmth and shelter. And that has been burned into your brain. Just like the chocolate or the sweets they gave you when you behaved well.

Do a reset. Let's reprogram your brain

Just as your brain has learned to ask for chocolate to lift your spirits, it can "forget" it and reprogram itself to make choices that help you lose weight. In our gallery you will find the new software that you must put in your head. It is easy and effective, and it will help you not to gain weight in these days of coronavirus.