Healthy eating is one of the most important things you can do to take care of your health.
In this article, you will discover the 14 most important steps to learn how to eat healthy the right way.
1. Understand that Learning to Eat Healthy is like Learning a New Language
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
Learning to eat healthy requires the same effort as learning a new language.
The foods we eat are like the words of a language we speak.
The individual meals we consume are its grammar.
And what we eat during a day, a week, a month, or a year are the chapters of a book we write: the book of our health.
Our personal book can tell the story of a life of aches and illnesses, or it can tell a life full of energy, health, and a desire to do.
What is your story?
2. Build the Right School for You
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
To learn a new language, you need to find the right school for you. To learn to eat healthy you also need to find the right resources.
School doesn’t have to mean a building with classrooms and teachers.
Nowadays, the options are many: books, videos, in-person courses, online courses, apps, blogs can all help. You can find an expert to guide you on a learning path. With these and other resources, you can create your own personal school.
Today, anything you want to learn is within your reach. There is no shortage of resources. What is almost always missing is the desire to do it and the motivation.
Don’t have the time? It’s not true.
If you don’t have the time, you lack the motivation. Surely you can find the time to take care of your health. Give up something less important.
So, first of all, you need to understand that learning to eat healthy is like learning a new language. And then you need to make the decision to learn this new “language” and start looking for the resources you need to learn it.
3. Be Aware that Learning the Language of Healthy Eating is a Challenge
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison
Just like learning any new language, learning to eat healthy takes motivation, time, and discipline.
Learning a new language is not easy, but it can be a motivating and fulfilling experience. The same can be said for healthy eating.
Learning a new language allows you to discover new worlds, connect with new and interesting people, and improve yourself.
Unfortunately, however, learning a new language is not as simple as swallowing a pill.
If you have ever been told by a specialist, “You need to eat healthier”, you have probably experienced how vague and practically impossible this request is to implement.
No one can ever teach you how to eat healthy during a 10-minute visit.
It would be like claiming to learn German in 10 minutes.
In most cases, the specialist may have given you a “diet”, that is, a sheet of paper with exactly what you need to eat in a week. It’s like receiving a sheet written in German with the request to memorize it, like a parrot.
You will surely be able to learn to read perfectly what is written on the sheet, but in this way, you will obviously not learn German.
You will not be able to formulate any other sentence that is not written on the sheet, you will not understand the grammar of the language. You will not know why certain words are written in a certain way, and why sentences are organized according to a certain logic.
In addition, you will soon tire of the few things you find on the sheet. Your vocabulary will be practically non-existent.
Of a world with thousands of foods at your disposal, you will only know a dozen.
There must be a better way…
4. Find Your Personal Motivation: Understand Why You Want to Learn the Language of Healthy Eating
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
The real engine of your progress is your motivation.
First of all: if you decide to learn a new language there is a motivation that drives you to do so.
For example, you might learn a new language to have more opportunities in the world of work, or to be able to travel abroad in a more relaxed way, or because you have met someone from another country with whom you want to communicate more naturally.
To learn to eat healthy, you also need to be very clear about what your motivation is. In fact, your motivation will be the key to your success. Find it now:
5. Study: If You Don’t Study, You Don’t Learn. This Also Applies to the Language of Healthy Eating
“Knowledge is power.” – Francis Bacon
Learning a new language requires a lot of study, the same goes for learning to eat healthy.
No one can ever teach you anything: you will always be the one to learn.
It is very important that you find good teachers, who can be experts, books, videos, courses, blogs, etc. But remember that it will never be your teachers’ responsibility that you will learn this new language of healthy eating.
The responsibility and the key to success will always remain in your hands: if you find a bad teacher you can always change it.
Learning a new language requires a lot of theoretical study to learn new words, grammar, idioms, and common expressions.
The same goes for learning to eat healthy.
However, this should not scare you at all. Focus first of all on taking the first step and then continue to take one after the other without interruption.
And when you inevitably happen to take the wrong road, find the right one and keep walking in the right direction.
6. Practice: If You Don’t Practice it Every Day, You Will Never Be Able to Understand and Speak the Language of Healthy Eating
“The only source of knowledge is experience.” – Albert Einstein
To learn a new language, you have to speak it. To learn to eat healthy… you have to eat healthy!
Studying a new language theoretically will be useless if you don’t put what you have learned into practice. And the only way to practice is to speak, listen, read and write the new language you are learning.
All of this also applies to learning to eat healthily. For example, it is important to:
- Write – for example, a weekly plan for your diet.
- Read – for example, read books and blogs by healthy eating experts.
- Watch and listen – if to learn a language you watch TV series in the original language, to learn to eat healthy you can have fun watching videos of healthy recipes or videos of nutrition experts on topics that you find interesting. Listening to podcasts can be an equally valid option, especially when you’re on the go.
- Cook – The most important thing is that you have to get in the kitchen and learn to have fun cooking. You will have to learn to speak the new language instead of the old one you have always spoken. So you will have to start putting new things on your plate, tasting them, and enjoying eating them. You will discover new and healthy foods that are probably unknown to you today.
7. Make Learning the Language of Healthy Eating Enjoyable, Not a Punishment
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” – Virginia Woolf
If you want to learn to speak a new language you probably won’t start by learning the vocabulary to do your tax return (unless you’re an accountant…).
You’ll most likely start with words and phrases that are useful and that you enjoy, for example, that you need to order at a restaurant or to have a conversation with a friend, or to travel more easily.
Similarly, if you want to learn to eat healthy, start with the things you like best.
For example, if you are a pasta lover, start experimenting with recipes with whole wheat pasta instead of white.
If you have a sweet tooth, start trying new and healthier desserts, or start to appreciate more the taste of fruit which is naturally sweet.
If, on the other hand, you really like meat, you could eat less red meat and more white meat. You could try marinating the chicken and seasoning it with new spices that you may have never tried before.
These are just a few examples. The main point is to understand that you should always eat healthy in a way that is enjoyable, otherwise, you will inevitably tend to gravitate towards your usual habits.
8. Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes: Keep Speaking the New Language Even When You Think You’re “Funny” or “Different”
“To avoid error is to avoid life.” (Carl Gustav Jung)
When children learn to speak they are funny because they try, they hear words and they want to repeat them. They are not afraid to make mistakes. They are curious to make sounds and communicate with others.
Gradually, however, they will no longer just be funny and will begin to speak correctly. They will thus be able to communicate with their parents, relatives, and friends.
They will have learned from their mistakes. Error is their most important teacher.
For them, learning a new language does not mean studying. It is not a punishment. On the contrary, making mistakes is fun! It’s their way of starting to live, to be part of the world.
Similarly, learning to eat healthy must be an experience of fun, curiosity, and personal growth.
Initially, you may feel different from others. For example, when you order a large salad at a restaurant instead of a pizza, this should certainly not stop you from continuing to do good for yourself.
9. Make an Effort to Speak the Language of Healthy Eating Even When it Would Be Easier to Speak Your Usual Language
“He who has correct intuitions amidst confused brains is like one who has a clock that works in a city where all the bell towers have clocks that go wrong. He alone knows the exact time, but what good is it to him? Everyone else sets their time by the city clocks that show the wrong time.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Even when you have learned the first words of this new language and therefore have begun to eat in a healthier way, there will always be the lurking risk of falling back into old habits.
It’s like when we learn the first words of a new language. During our first conversations, we often struggle a lot and are tempted to go back to speaking in our native language.
This is especially true for healthy eating, as we live in a world where almost everyone speaks the language of unhealthy eating.
For this reason, learning to eat healthy requires a particular effort not to fall back into our usual daily routine.
Your challenge is to continue speaking the language of healthy eating even in a world where everyone speaks the language of unhealthy eating.
It’s not easy, but there’s a secret…
10. Find the Right Study Buddies to Learn and Practice the Language of Healthy Eating
“Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.” (Proverbs 13:20)
As we have already observed, when a young child is learning to speak, they will inevitably pronounce words incorrectly which may even sound funny or amusing.
Unfortunately, some parents, instead of correcting the child, even repeat their wrong words thinking it is funny. In this way, however, they will slow down the child’s learning process.
The right thing to do is to teach the child to pronounce the word correctly. Even in this case, the child will be happy that the parent is interacting with him and will still be happy to learn something new.
In fact, if you think about it, for a child all words are funny in the same way: both the wrong one and the right one. So, you might as well teach him the right one and laugh together.
Obviously, we cannot choose our parents, but we can choose our teachers, our friends, and the people with whom we spend our time.
So try to connect with people who, like you, are on the path to learning to eat healthy, or who are even already experts.
Spend time with them regularly, virtually or in person.
You will see that these people, instead of criticizing your choices or even finding them funny, will be able to advise you and give you interesting ideas.
11. Always Maintain Curiosity and a Desire to Learn: All Languages Update and Change Over Time
“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Even if you already have some study of this new language of healthy eating behind you, never stop studying. Never think you already know everything.
Like all languages, the language of healthy eating also evolves and changes over time. Science progresses and discovers new things all the time and so this language is also updated.
Things that we thought were very harmful to health, we now know that in reality they are not. And vice versa, things that we previously believed to be healthy we have actually discovered are not.
You must always be ready to change schools.
12. Emigrate to “Healthland” Where Everyone Speaks the Language of Healthy Eating and Occasionally Return to Your Native Country for a Vacation
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
If you continue on your journey towards learning the language of healthy eating, at some point it will happen that most of your food choices will be new and healthy, while only a minority will be dictated by your old habits.
At this point, you will have reached a very important and fundamental milestone. In fact, as far as your diet is concerned, what counts is not the exceptions but your daily routine.
At this point, you will have moved to a new place: the world of “Healthland”.
It is in this new world that you will spend the rest of your life and the beauty is that you can return to your native country for a vacation and, if you want, you can indulge in the foods that you once loved without feeling guilty.
In fact, let us repeat: what matters most is what you eat usually, not what you eat occasionally.
13. Become a Native Speaker: The Language of Health Goes Beyond Healthy Eating
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an action and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” – Stephen Covey
When it comes to developing new habits, the secret is to integrate them into your life so that they become as natural as brushing your teeth.
Once you get used to having a nutritious, healthy and fulfilling diet, you will discover that the real magic for your health happens when you discover the importance and pleasure of:
- doing physical exercise every day
- taking care of your rest and having restful sleep
- carrying out activities to manage stress
- taking care to nurture your social relationships
- avoiding those habits that everyone now knows to be harmful such as smoking or drinking alcohol
- being aware of the meaning and purpose you have in life
- keeping your mind active
The points above are not listed at random. They are the result of rigorous and very important research by prestigious institutions such as Harvard and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
For some, all this may seem like an impossible undertaking, or an incredibly painful sacrifice. In reality, the benefits that derive from a healthy lifestyle are worth more than gold for our health and for our lives.
Being healthy, having energy during the day, being in a good mood and having a joy for life: these are just some of the “side effects” of a healthy lifestyle.
Even just the physical sensations that you can experience when you reach this state are not in the least comparable to the pleasure that you can experience by eating cookies in front of the television, or smoking a cigarette or drinking a bottle of wine.
Only if you try it will you truly understand.
It’s up to you.
Do you want to try?
Then read this last point…
14. Do Something Today: A First Step to Learn the Language of Healthy Eating
Even a long journey begins with a single step. (Lao Tzu)
All adventures, including those that last a lifetime, begin with a first step.
If you want to learn the language of healthy eating, you can do something today.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to my newsletter using the box below to receive tips, information, inspiration, and news to get started and progress along your journey to the wonderful world of ‘Healthland’. I would really like to stay in touch!
Versione in italiano: Impara la lingua della salute: mangiare salutare in 14 passi
