When you hear expressions like "a healthy lifestyle" or "a balanced diet", what comes to your mind? Let me guess. Salads, workouts, and lean people? 😅
To me, a "healthy lifestyle" and a "balanced diet" is the one that makes someone happy and satisfied. Not frustrated and miserable. So, once again, I am endorsing eating carbs, chocolate, and any other food that makes you happy.
No, I am not saying that you should eat junk food whenever you feel like it. I am saying that our happiness and mental health play a massive role in creating a healthy lifestyle.
Yet still, fitness and health pros keep encouraging crazy workout routines, utterly absurd fad diets, and restrictive meal plans. (Which, by the way, never give great long-term results.)
We tend to forget that our mental health is an important factor. A factor that drives the whole process of being healthy. We keep making ourselves unhappy.
In developed countries, most people have access to enough food that they would not consider "staying alive" as one of their reasons for eating. Frequently we eat because we like a particular food. Eating is a pleasurable activity, so why do we keep trying to take this pleasure away?
If your diet is restrictive or excludes entire groups of foods, how does it make you feel? Satisfied? Motivated? Optimistic? I doubt it.
I haven't had Nutella since I was a kid. I know my body, and I know it was just a one-time craving. I most likely won't eat it again. Probably for another ten years. So I didn't feel guilty about it. On the contrary, I truly enjoyed it.
Find a balance between what you like to eat and what you should eat, and I don't see a problem. The problem only starts when we abuse unhealthy foods. And when we give in to our capricious child-like desires.
Learn to manage your emotions and build a strong foundation (aka "a real healthy lifestyle"), and a small jar of Nutella won't do you any harm. Unless you eat it all at once. 😆😆
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