How to Develop Your Own Eating Guidelines

If you’ve been around the block a few times with different diets, whether it be Atkins, Keto, Intermittent fasting, Paleo, Vegan or Dukan, you’ll know how important lasting results you can live with are.
This is where awareness helps. Mindfulness helps you develop a set of rules that work for you personally, simply by paying close attention to different foods and how they personally affect your body and make you feel. Lowering your carbs and improving your insulin sensitivity may help you achieve weight loss (I know it did for me). Yet how do we maintain the positive results over many years?
WE need to develop a set of rules or guidelines that we can live with happily, in the real world and over the long term. Ad you may know, I lost my 20 pounds (10 kilos) twenty years ago, whilst living in France with a French family.
Luckily, the same set of guidelines I used back then still work for me today, even during and post menopause.
If you’re wondering what my basic “rules” are, they are:

• Three meals a day at regular times
• Eating between hunger and fullness
• Prioritize quality over quantity
• Small amounts of sweets and play foods, only following real food (protein and healthy fats, and vegetables)
• Non calorific drinks between meals

Personally, I chose to stop eating gluten, once I learned that I suffer from an autoimmune condition (Hashimoto’s). Prior to this, I had struggled with banning foods completely, due to feelings of deprivation, however, once I learned what gluten was doing to my gut and the migraines it caused me, I happily stopped eating gluten, in the name of health.

​After quitting gluten, I also realized how less bloated I was, which was a clear indication, in hindsight, that my body was intolerant to gluten. Therefore, I find that when we abstain from certain foods due to health reasons and we witness the benefits to our health, it is much easier to maintain over the long term.
Truth is, many diets do achieve visible results in the short term but most are simply difficult to maintain over the long term, unless we feel so amazing that we want to eat this way forever. Low carb and keto diets get amazing results, there is no doubt because I’ve seen it many times with my own eyes, and yet, keto is very hard to do properly and for long periods of time.
Again, every individual is different and if our body has difficultly in processing fat, or we simply need more carbs to fuel our lifestyles, then it’s up to us to learn to be extra mindful and read our body’s needs.
Also if restricting carbohydrate intake too drastically results in feelings of desperation and increased cravings, then we need to think twice and consider what set of eating guidelines is sustainable over the long term.