Food Tips 2: Consider Small Changes
2nd in a series of posts on eating better and cooking more.

Have you seen those shows where the host goes into someone's pantry and throws out all their Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Fruit Loops and forces them to make tofu steak and steamed vegetables for dinner?

I've noticed people often go overboard when they get the itch for change, whether it's because they are trying to lose weight, they had some sort of health crisis, or they saw a documentary on some scary aspect of the food industry.

In my experience, going overboard only works for a little while. You might consider it to cleanse your system or something, but over the long-term, consider the baby step.

For example, three years ago I didn't drink much, maybe 2-3 glasses of juice a day and maybe a little water at bedtime. I never liked water growing up. I wanted to drink more, and I could have just gone straight to dropping juice forever and trying to drink eight glasses of water a day, but I bet that wouldn't have worked. So over a three-year period I made the following changes:
1. Stopped drinking juice that had additional sweeteners, and limited juice to 2 glasses a day. Otherwise, drank herb tea with honey.
2. Limited juice to 1 glass a day.
3. Started sweetening tea with just a smidge of juice instead of honey.
4. Cut sweetener out of tea altogether and tried to drink at least 2 cups a day.
5. Tried to drink 4 cups of unsweetened tea or water a day, and the only juices now allowed are not-from-concentrate organic orange or grapefruit juice, or high antioxidant juices like pomegranate, which I try to drink less than 4 times a week.

As you can see I'm still not up to the ideal half-my-body-weight-in-water. But I am drinking more water, less juice, and I stick to it. I might lapse back to stage 4 some days but I am definitely not going to suddenly go back to stage 1 because it was so gradual.

You can try this with anything you know you're doing wrong in your diet. What can you do that is just ONE STEP better? Like, say you're living on McDonalds. You could try stocking your kitchen with easy food like microwave meals that contain one little vegetable, some organic hot dogs, whatever is just a smidge better. And when you get used to that, just go one step farther. Commit to eating a piece of fruit with your meal, or go for only natural convenience food, or make macaroni and cheese and add peas or something.

How do you know when to move on? I usually just know because I start to feel like the latest change has become routine and I'm itching to eat just a little better again.