When you start with easy switches, you can train your tastes and expectations so that you actually crave healthy foods instead of pizza and junk food.
If you are using a calorie counter to lose weight and get healthy, the excitement of starting a new healthy lifestyle may cause you to attempt to totally turn around your eating habits and relationship with food overnight. Unfortunately, this could lead to burnout or feelings of deprivation and may lead to giving up or quitting before new healthy habits are formed. Just as a couch potato wouldn’t be wise to jump up and attempt a marathon run without any training ahead of time, a sudden switch to a healthy diet requires a little training time as well healthy foods.
When you use a calorie tracker, you can start to slowly add new, healthier foods to your diet without shocking your system with a complete overnight change. In many ways, it could be better to add foods to your diet as opposed to trying to cut out junk food at first. This way, the healthy food that you consume can slowly push out the junk food as time goes on, and you follow a natural progression to a healthier way of eating. It takes time to acclimate to new tastes and textures in your food, but with a little training, you will find that you enjoy the healthier foods much more than you did the junk food.
When you use a food database to find healthy foods to add to your diet, you can pick a few at a time to introduce. Maybe start with a switch from processed white bread to more substantial whole grain bread with less sugar. When you start with easy switches, you can train your tastes and expectations so that you actually crave healthy foods instead of pizza and junk food. Before you know it, all of the junk food will have been eliminated from your diet without any painful transitions or cravings.
Adding healthy foods using your food diary can really benefit your weight loss overall. If your goal is to lose weight so that you can be healthier, forming healthier eating habits over a longer period of time can make those foods routine. If you try to make all of the changes overnight, it will work more like a temporary diet than a lifestyle change, with you quickly starting to feel deprived and resentful of your new healthy diet and lifestyle.