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Are you unhappy with yourself? Are you thinking of going on a diet again to make yourself happier? Diet culture is everywhere. Type the word ‘diet’ into google and you’ll find enough diet options to choose from. So which one will you choose? How do you choose from the hundreds out there? Or should you even be choosing one?

What do you do when you’ve veered off from your eating plan? Do you call yourself a failure and throw in the towel? Or are you able to look at the situation objectively, learn from it and move on? We all make mistakes*, especially when it comes to food and eating. We have to learn to accept that.

What’s happening with your cravings? Are you managing to keep yourself busy and not needing food to combat the boredom, or is it so bad that you’re stopping by the kitchen every few minutes?

How many times have you found yourself going to the kitchen to look into the fridge or cupboards in these last few days of lockdown?

Did you see the headline: ‘Bad diets are responsible for more deaths than smoking’? Say what? Really, are we seriously eating so badly that smoking is seen as the lesser of two evils?

There has been a lot of negative publicity for sugar. It didn’t help matters that a study was published indicating that the sugar industry had funded research years ago to swing the blame for heart disease away from sugar and onto saturated fat. So does that mean that fat is good?

We are doing a very poor job of protecting the environment that we depend on for food and water. We need to start becoming interested in learning where food comes from, how it is grown and produced, and what this is doing to our environment. Food production system and diets play a crucial role in the issue of sustainability. Read this is you want to find out what you can do to help the planet.

Do you feel that December will ruin your hard work this year? Are there just too many parties, dinners and family gatherings that weight gain seems inevitable? It is possible to survive the Christmas season without gaining weight. Don’t fall for the myths of unavoidable holiday weight gain. You can enjoy you holiday favourites and still start the year looking slim and trim.

The festive season is upon us and with it comes the challenge of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It’s a time of lots of eating opportunities with delicious meals, desserts and drinks and a time of less exercise. So how can you continue the healthy habits you have established and not let the bad habits creep in? For me, the holidays are no different than any other time of the year! It can be this easy for you too.

As we all know, good nutrition is an important component of a balanced healthy life, but we sometimes get lost as to what good nutrition is! The basics are easy, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, choose mostly low fat dairy and lean meat, don’t eat junk food excessively, but is that getting you where you want to go with your weight goals?

We are all aware that our modern Western diets and lifestyles are contributing to many diseases. The Western diet is typically high in animal fats and preservatives (specifically salt) and low fruit and vegetables and it is this food combination that has been shown to be responsible (in part) for the cause of chronic diseases and cancers.

‘Weight loss’ New Year’s resolutions are all too common, and unfortunately are often also broken by the first week of January! I think that it is great that people are trying to be healthier but I believe how many try to do it is what is causing the high ‘failure’ rate. When people go ‘on’ a (quick fix) diet they have often not made effective goals for their journey. Goals are the groundwork for the journey to health and often I find that when it is just based on a number it is easy for life to take over and old habits to creep back.