As an overweight person, I’d often look at thin people around me and wish if I could be lucky like them to never have to think about my weight.

I’d often think about what my life would be like if I was thin, healthy and fit. Even thinking about it would make my heart soar.

This thinking got further stimulated when I read Atomic Habits by James Clear.

In the book, James mentions that who we aim to become, the identity we want to create for ourselves, should dictate the systems we should put in place to achieve our goals.

This meant, if I wanted to become a thin, healthy person, I needed to look at life from a thin person’s perspective.

And that’s exactly what I started doing.

Observing the people who were healthy and naturally thin.

It wasn’t difficult to find such people.

I was particularly fascinated by the examples where one spouse was thin and healthy while the other was overweight. They were perfect for me to see and learn what a naturally thin person does that overweight people don’t.

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I learnt that naturally thin people:

1. Eat only when they are hungry.

2. Treat food as fuel.

3. Do not attach any emotional significance to food.

4. Stop eating once they are satisfied.

These felt like common sense in the start. But when I started looking at my eating patterns, I noticed, I didn’t do any of these.

I ate food whenever I felt like eating. That meant, eating cookies hardly half an hour after breakfast or a piece of cake just because I saw it sitting in the fridge while I was searching for something else.

I ate because it was time to eat.

I ate because everyone else was eating.

I ate because the food tasted so good.

I ate because I didn’t want to sound uncourteous by declining the food offered to me.

I ate food because I couldn’t see it go waste.

Healthy foods like fruits and vegetables didn’t register in my mind as indulgence or overeating.

Simply because they are healthy for my body.

For me, food was a lot more than mere fuel. I ate food because I had an emotional attachment to it.

I ate food because I was feeling bored.

I ate food when I was happy.

I ate food to celebrate.

I ate food when I was sad, anxious or overwhelmed.

Whether my body needed what I ate or not, didn’t even cross my mind.

I had somehow lost track of the very fundamental, that why do we eat or why nature created hunger in the first place.

Food is meant to energise our body, to fuel it for function. That’s all.

Every other function we’ve assigned to food is secondary and even unnecessary.

Over the course of noting my eating patterns in my food journal, I noted, I ate way past the level when I felt satisfied.

I’d often eat till my plate was clean or I couldn’t stuff myself any further. And that was more of a norm than an exception.

These were an eye-opener for me.

I could see that there was no wonder I was obese because of the sheer amount of food I ate. Often mindlessly.

Awareness of a problem is the first step towards finding a resolution to it.

Keeping things simple is my mantra to get started on anything I want to achieve.

I wasn’t the first person trying to learn healthy eating habits so there was clearly no dearth of useful tips available to help me get started.

The simplest yet the most effective tips that got me results right from day one were:

1. Eat in smaller size plates.

2. Eat in plates that contrast with your food to let you see exactly how much you’re eating.

3. Add more fresh produce to your every meal. Let the bulk be of freshly cut fruits and vegetables and the cooked meals be an accompaniment.

4. Drink water in shorter, fatter glasses than tall, slender ones. This helps you drink more water than you normally would.

5. Keep healthy, fresh food available and easily accessible. On the kitchen counter, dining table, front rows of the fridge.

6. Store healthy foods in transparent boxes while unhealthy foods in foiled or steel containers. Out of sight is out of mind.

During my period of learning to eat healthily, I came upon an interesting concept.

It stated,

Every time I say to myself, “I can’t eat this chocolate because it makes me fat” I am imposing a restriction on myself.

On the contrary, if I say, “I don’t eat chocolate because I am focusing on healthy eating” I am making a conscious choice in tune with my life goals.

Choices feel empowering, while restrictions impose an undermining impact on our sense of power.

All of these are just the start points.

It is amazing how the weight-loss experts never ever mention the importance of how our mindsets impact our body.

This mismatch is the only reason why so many people want to lose weight, but only a few are actually able to.

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