Whenever there is food around, you are bound to hear one person announce that he or she is on a diet. They may have a good reason to be on a diet. However, this gets everyone else thinking that they need to go on a diet as well. This can often cause people to become paranoid about what they eat. This significantly detracts from the enjoyment of eating. They will be nervous to eat anything that has too many calories, or too many carbs etc., and their diet will then consist of foods that they do not enjoy eating.
Ellyn Satter, a registered dietician, believes that when enjoyment is taking out of eating, nutrition deteriorates. On her website she writes, “Surveys show that when the joy goes out of eating, nutrition suffers.” Nutrition is about eating right, but it is also about enjoying what you eat. Satter suggests a few ways to maintain a healthy diet while not becoming too paranoid about food. She says that every individual should eat until they feel satisfied. This can be achieved by having set eating times, cooking something you will enjoy eating, and paying attention while eating.
Another way of maintaining a healthy diet without becoming paranoid is by having planned snacks throughout the day, not just the rigid three meals a day. Without snacks, one may overeat at those meals, since they starved themselves the rest of the day. Having healthy snacks spaced throughout the day enables a person to enjoy eating the entire day.
These snacks should be planned ahead of time. When thinking of a snack to eat, one automatically assumes that it is a food item that can be eaten on the go. This method of “eating on the go” takes away from the enjoyment of the food. If one has a snack that requires them to sit down and eat it, they will be able to focus on their food and further enjoy what they are eating. Examples of these kinds of snacks are apples and peanut butter, cookies and milk, and carrots and hummus. Sitting down and making a mini-meal out of snacks creates great enjoyment.
How do you get kids to enjoy the healthy foods they should eat? The parents are the examples for the rest of the family; once someone learns to enjoy what they eat, they should pass the skill on to their family. If they eat the foods on the table, their children might want to mimic them and eat those foods as well. There should be a few different options at every meal. It is preferable to have at least one dish from each food group on the table. If a child refuses to eat something, forcing them to eat the food is counterproductive. Satter writes, “Children generally need to be offered a food five to twenty times- or even more- before they learn to enjoy it.”
Paying attention to what you eat can be both good and bad. Focusing too closely can cause resentment towards eating. Paying attention to calories causes a lot of unnecessary stress, reducing the joy of eating. It’s important to remember that while eating a healthy meal or snack, it is important to take time to enjoy. Enjoyment should not sit on the sideline!
(Information adapted from ellynsatter.com)