For the next two weeks we are going to work on including healthy fats into your daily diet and with every meal.
These two weeks coaching plans are guided support in a daily format to help start creating habits for health. The biggest key to your success is consistency and it is the daily habit routine that helps you get there. These daily reminders are me on your shoulder empowering and coaching you to positive change.
Habit Challenge: Eat healthy fats with every meal
For the next two weeks, I challenge you to eat a source of healthy fats with every main meal.
Why? Here are some interesting benefits we see from including fat in our diet:
When looking at the metabolic processes and their ability to supply energy, it is truly clear that fat is an essential component to anyone’s diet
Choose which sources of healthy fats you would like to eat, and in what quantities. If you have been avoiding healthy fats up to now, then start with a small portion each meal.
The first step is to scale the habit to something you are 90% confident you can do for 6 days of the week.
Have one day off per week from completing the habit.
Start of the habit and change behaviour this is where you personalise your habit. Aim to be the best you can be and take ownership of your new habit and aim for 90% of the time eating healthy fats.
The incredible benefits that healthy fats have to offer include better energy, increased nutrients, improved fat loss and enhanced flavour to your meals. A word of warning with fats moderation is key, as a little goes a long way. Fat is the most concentrated source of energy, and 1 gram of fat provides around 9 calories (compared to 4 calories per gram for protein and carbohydrates)
That is why understanding portion size is so important, as calories from fats can quickly add up
At the end of the day ask yourself two questions.
What did I do well today?
What did I learn today?
These questions help you reflect and form these new habits.
There are three major types of fat: saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. Examples of foods containing a high proportion of saturated fat include animal fat products such as cream, cheese, butter, ghee, and fatty meats.
Certain vegetable products have high saturated fat content, such as coconut oil, palm oil and even cocoa.
Many prepared foods are high in saturated fat content, such as pizza, processed dairy, bacon and sausages, yes most of the tasty stuff!
Next, we have the family of unsaturated fats (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated), typically known as ‘less stable’ than saturated fats, due to their chemical structure, and does mean they shouldn’t be used for cooking at high temperatures.
Always use saturated fats for cooking.
There are two types of polyunsaturated fatty acids, linolenic acid (omega 3 fatty acid) and linoleic acid (omega 6 fatty acid) in foods.
We call these the essential fatty acids because they must be obtained from our diets. Omega fatty acids are rich in foods such as walnuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and natural oils like flaxseed and linseed.
Last is monounsaturated fat.
Monounsaturated fats are found in natural foods such as red meat, whole milk products, nuts and high fat fruits such as olives and avocados.
Olive oil is about 75% monounsaturated fat.
Fats, the ones that you should avoid, hydrogenated fats.
Hydrogenated fats are chemically classified as unsaturated fats yet behave more like saturated fats in the body. The term ‘hydrogenated’ means they are solid at room temperature, and so creating a man-made saturated fat. Here is the bad news: hydrogenated fats are poisonous to our bodies. When we eat them, they replace normal saturated fat in our cells, and sometimes the essential fatty acids as well.
Hydrogenated fats have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, and obesity. By limiting the amount of heavily processed foods in your diet, you will be avoiding these nasty fats.
It can be difficult to stay consistent with a habit if you have a lot going on in your life, or if you take a break from your normal routine. The perfect example of this is the weekend. So, let us set you up to win this weekend.
How? By doing an easy version of your habit for the weekend. Today, I want you to plan how you will eat healthy fats with every meal this weekend
Remember the following:
Fat is an energy source
Fat is the most energy-dense nutrient, easily stored and transported within the body, therefore serves as an excellent energy reserve
The body can store unlimited amounts of fat.
Excess carbohydrates and protein can be converted to fat but cannot be made from fat.
Fat can keep you fuller for longer
Fat is a key player in managing inflammation
Reducing inflammation within the body is one of the best things you can do when seeking optimal body composition and health.
From a health perspective, these fatty acids appear to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.
It has now been proven that dietary cholesterol, such as that from fat, has no effect on cholesterol levels in the blood. In fact, quite the opposite: dietary fats can improve our good cholesterol readings (HDL) by converting the bad (LDL).
Many fats contain high levels of fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K2.
Fat is required to properly digest and assimilate these fat-soluble vitamins.
Use this to reflect on how your week of getting to grips with the fats in your diet and allow yourself to continually assess where you are. If your week has gone well, then continue with more of the same. But also asking those difficult questions of yourself if the week has not gone according to plan is a way of being honest. Have you given yourself the best chance, did you give it everything or is there room for improvement. Remember this is all progression and learning as we understand more the foods within our diet.
Ask yourself am I worth this, is this the journey I want to be on and how do I feel being on this journey. It is all about creating that positive feedback loop
If all went well last week, and you did not struggle or skip the habit for more than a day, I recommend that you lengthen the habit this week. If you have struggled, keep it the same as last week or make it even easier.
For example, if you have just been eating a very small amount of healthy fats with each meal, then try increasing the amount this week. Or if you have struggled with healthy fats at a certain meal, put extra focus this week on getting it right.
Never make too big an adjustment so that it becomes too difficult.
This slow change process of expanding the habit a little at a time helps overcome the resistance of the mind to change and discomfort.
Gradually the habit becomes your new normal and you can expand a bit more, pushing your comfort zone a little at a time.
Average fat intake for a healthy individual seeking a balanced diet, 30% of daily caloric requirements should come from healthy fats.
This can be broken down into the three different types: 10% should be consumed from monounsaturated fat 10% should come from polyunsaturated fat (omega 3 and 6) 10% should be from saturated fat.
Hydrogenated fat should be avoided
When seeking fat loss, recommendations of a daily intake of 20-40% of total daily calories is a good starting point for fats.
I would not recommend going lower than 15%, as the negatives appear to outweigh the benefits.
When seeking improved health, a large portion of the population stands to benefit from a balanced healthy fat diet.
In fact, reducing refined carbohydrates and increasing healthy fat has been rigorously proven as health benefit.
Adding a small serving of healthy fats to each meal is a great habit to adopt, and you will start to quickly feel the benefits.
Never feel guilt from failing.
The guilt can be more harmful than the failure and stops you from doing the habit.
You must learn to be aware of it, then let it go, and counter it with something more positive. Tell yourself when you slip and fall, it is just another lesson that will teach you to be better at change.
Take a longer view of things; a failure is just for a day or two, or perhaps a week… But that does not matter in the long term.
Missing a few days makes almost no difference over a year. Over a lifetime, one day means nothing, but what you do on most days is what counts.
A great way to stick with your habit is to create a consequence for not doing it.
You might try creating a fun but embarrassing consequence for missing two days in a row and commit to this by sharing it with a group or friend.
For example – you could promise to sing a song and post a recording online.
Today, think about your super easy, almost effortless version of the habit for the weekend.
How and when will you do the habit this weekend?
We are almost at the end of the ‘Eat healthy fats with every meal’ habit challenge.
As we prepare to move onto the next habit challenge, you will want to put this current habit into ‘habit maintenance mode.’
This is a way of continuing it with less of a focus. By now, the habit should start to become more automatic if you have been at least a little consistent. You do not need reminders to start the habit, and it is feeling a bit easier, more part of your ‘normal.’
So, as you begin to move your focus to the next habit challenge, all you want to do is not forget about this habit.
You don’t need to keep track of it every day, as long as things are going well. But every few days, pause and reflect on this habit and check in to see that everything is still going well. Maybe once a week, use one of our Sunday reflection sessions to assess whether you have any obstacles around this habit, need to adjust, learned anything new.
After a while, you need to reflect on the habit less often, as it becomes ingrained in your life.
Stay focused this weekend and remember to have some fun in the process!
Staying consistent with your new habits is key to your success, this however does not mean 100% of the time.
Striving for 70,80 or 90% of the time is a great target and so if you are managing your health and wellbeing on point Monday to Friday then you are doing amazing.
Keep goimg.
Over the last two weeks you have completed the ‘Eat healthy fats with every meal’ habit challenge – nice work!
Today, take a minute after practicing your habit to reflect again on the past week of doing the habit.
What has the habit been like and how have you done?
What have you learned?
What parts or how much of this habit will you continue to do? Consider writing a short journal entry about these reflections, to solidify your learning.
Treat habit formation as a learning process, to learn about yourself, your mind, mindfulness, resistance and more.