Plus, anything we’re unsure of we can always look up on the internet. Now I know, the internet is littered with unreliable sources and guidance. But if you know where to look, you can easily find reliable information about nutrition science and studies, as well as recommendations by credentialed health professionals.

You’d think with all this knowledge and access, eating healthy would be a piece of cake (pun intended of course)! Unfortunately that isn’t exactly the case. Yes we know how to eat healthy in theory, but making it happen in real life can be extremely challenging.

We may not have enough time to prepare healthy meals, or even enough money to buy nutritious foods. Our social interactions may revolve around food, or we may need to consider others’ preferences when cooking.

And we can’t forget about how easy it is to get less-than-healthy options. Feeling a little hungry on the way home from work? No problem! Stop by a fast food restaurant for some french fries and an apple turnover. The service is quick and you don’t even have to get out of your car!

These reasons all make it challenging to eat healthy, but a lot of them can be overcome in one way or another. However, because we just love making things difficult for ourselves, there are a few additional things we do that make eating healthy even more challenging. Read on to find out what those are, and how to overcome them.

1. We have unrealistic demands

What? Unrealistic demands? All I want are healthy meal ideas. That are easy to make. And taste amazing. And are more interesting than boring old chicken and broccoli. Also, I can’t eat the same thing every day. Or leftovers…

Usually ready-to-go meals have more sodium and preservatives than we’d like, and healthy meals can be pretty simple. And as I’ve written before, simple doesn’t have to mean boring, but sometimes healthy foods just don’t taste that interesting!

We tend to want meals and snacks that satisfy all our cravings, while simultaneously providing us with nutrition. This wouldn’t be a problem if we craved foods like juicy strawberries or savory almonds, but most of the time our cravings are for much less nutritious foods.

Instead of looking for meals and snacks that are easy, healthy and tasty, choose two of those qualities to focus on. Come up with snacks that are healthy and easy to prepare but don’t exactly taste amazing. Test out recipes that are healthy and taste good, but that take a while to prepare. Start adjusting your food expectations and you’ll find that eating healthy gets a lot easier.

2. We focus on perfection

We’re so hard on ourselves when it comes to healthy eating! We may have eaten nothing but fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains for a week, but once we take one bite of a cookie, we think we’ve failed at eating healthy.

We have this idea that eating healthy means choosing the healthiest option every single time. And when that doesn’t happen, we beat ourselves up over our “lack of willpower”.

Even the words we use reinforce this drive for perfection: slipped up, cheated, got off track. Instead of framing our food selection as merely a choice we made, these phrases communicate that there is a right way to eat. They reinforce our belief that eating healthy means eating only good foods, and avoiding all the bad.

The thing is though, aiming for perfection is setting ourselves up for failure. We’re only human, and wanting delicious, satisfying food is in our nature. Of course ideally we’d choose the healthiest option most of the time, but there has to be space for us to sometimes choose differently.

Instead of thinking that eating healthy means always choosing the healthiest option, start thinking about how to make healthy eating a sustainable part of your life.

3. We forget to be critical

Have you heard that a low-carb diet could shorten your life? What about that high-fat dairy is now considered healthy? There are endless articles out there reporting on results from nutritional studies, but rarely do we take the time to read the actual study. Instead, we take these articles at face value, and start adopting their recommendations into our daily life.

Both articles I mention report on studies that have found some type of correlation. The first one found a correlation between a low-carb diet and early death, and the second one between high-fat dairy intake and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

If we were to read these articles (or possibly only glance at the titles), we might conclude that carbs and high-fat dairy products are now “good” for us. We could then throw up our hands and loudly complain about how nutrition recommendations change all the time.

However, it’s important for us to remember the difference between correlation and causation. These two studies found a relationship between low-carb diets and early death, and a relationship between high-fat dairy and decreased heart disease. What they didn’t find is causation. They didn’t find that low-carb diets cause early death, or that high-fat dairy causes decreased heart disease.

Any time a correlation is found, it’s important to keep an open mind about what that could mean. Sure, we could eventually find that low-carb diets do cause early death, but maybe we’ll find that people who follow low-carb diets are more likely to have additional unhealthy behaviors that contribute to an early death.

My college psychology professor gave an excellent example of correlation that I still remember to this day: he said that ice cream consumption is correlated to an increase in instances of drowning. Now, does that mean that eating ice cream causes drowning? No! It simply means that during the summer, people are more like to eat ice cream and go swimming. Ice cream consumption and drowning are connected, or correlated, but there’s no causation.

Thinking critically about what you read makes it easier to disregard outlandish claims. That means it’s less likely you’ll be swept up into the latest diet craze, and more likely to find a way to make healthy eating work for you.

4. We fear failure

OK, maybe we don’t exactly fear failure, but we sure don’t embrace it when it comes to eating healthy. The thing is, eating healthy is all about experimenting and figuring out what works best for us as individuals. There are many different methods and approaches out there, and it takes a lot of trial and error to find the ones that work for us.

However, all that experimenting means that we experience failure quite often. We may find that cutting out dessert causes intense cravings that result in a binge. Or we could learn that meal prepping on Sunday turns a cherished weekend day into one that’s unbearable.

When these things happen, it can be tempting to start thinking that healthy eating is impossible. Instead of viewing our failures as simply a method that didn’t work for us, we become discouraged and wonder why we should even try.

At these times it’s helpful to remember that eating healthy is an ongoing process. Perfection isn’t the goal, and there’s always improvements to make. Keeping this in mind makes it much less likely our failures will completely derail our healthy eating plans.

Stress, frustration and lack of sleep are a couple I’ve noticed, although sometimes I find myself skipping meals during these times as well. When I’m feeling celebratory I may reach for a beer or want to go out to eat, but I could also just as easily go climbing or experiment with cooking a new healthy meal.

With boredom though, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I always need to eat! If I’m bored during work, I’ll wander over to the vending machines and buy something salty, and if I’m sitting at home with nothing to do, I’ll search the kitchen for something sweet.

And it seems I’m not alone in this. Most people I’ve talked to say that boredom is big trigger for them wanting to eat.Our brains have somehow decided that the best way to relieve boredom is to find something to eat! However, there are three obvious problems with this approach:

1. In most of these situations our bodies don’t actually need any food. This means we’re getting more calories than we really need and most likely messing up our appetite for our next meal
2. Most of us never, ever, ever choose to eat vegetables when we’re bored. Instead, we always choose salty snacks or desserts that have barely any nutritional value. So not only are we getting extra calories, those calories are providing us with additional salt or sugar that we most likely don’t need.
3. Now, I can’t speak for others, but I have noticed that if I eat when I’m bored, I rarely feel satisfied when I’m done.

So why does this happen? How do our brains decide that food is the best option for dealing with boredom?

In one word, dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that’s strongly tied with feelings of reward and pleasure. Our levels can drop when our brains aren’t being stimulated, such as when we’re bored. This triggers us to take an action that will bring us pleasure, which brings our levels back up.

Eating is one way to raise our levels of dopamine, and as Dr. Susan Carnell writes, “our dopamine system evolved with the very purpose of making adaptive things like eating feel rewarding, so that we wouldn’t forget to do them and die”.

Of course there are other ways to spike dopamine levels — drugs, cigarettes and sex to name a few — but for some of us, food does the trick just fine.

But that’s not all. Yes, dopamine plays a role in all this, but there’s more that goes into making our bored-eating tendencies a full-blown habit.

As we know, boredom causes us to participate in behaviors that result in pleasure. However, if we constantly use one particular behavior, our brain becomes less able to experience pleasure from anything else. So if we always rely on food to relieve boredom, our brain becomes re-wired to derive the most pleasure from eating.

That means our brain will crave eating over other activities because that’s how it experiences the most pleasure. And the more we eat when we’re bored, the more this will become reinforced to our brain. And the more it’s reinforced, the more we turn to eating when bored. And the more we turn to eating … This cycle goes on and on until it’s a fully ingrained habit!

Now fortunately, if this is where you find yourself, you’re not stuck with this habit for life. There are a few steps you can take to break out of this never-ending cycle:

1. Notice when you’re eating due to boredom.

Sounds easy enough, right? Firstly, become familiar with the times and situations you’re most likely to experience boredom, and then notice if and when you turn to food for relief.

Is it during the day or late at night? While you’re at work or when you’re in the car? Become familiar with your emotional states throughout the day, and what your knee-jerk reactions are to them. Keeping a journal or log of what you discover may be helpful — it can aid you in searching for behavioral patterns and trends.

2. Brainstorm other ways to address boredom.

Come up with a list of all the activities you do that bring you pleasure. Are there any physical activities you enjoy or sports that you like playing? What hobbies or pastimes put a smile on your face? Think about how you could incorporate those activities when you’re feeling bored, and make a plan for when you’ll use them.

And if your list of activities is looking a little paltry, it may be time to branch out and try new things. Experiment with different activities until you find a few that you enjoy. Learn how to knit or take up painting. Sign up for some dance classes or become a dog walker. Ask your friends what they like to do and try it out for yourself.

And if after all these new activities eating still tops your list, have no fear. Remember that the more you use an activity, the more it’ll become connected to your brain’s reward center. So the more you do them, the more enjoyable they’ll become.

3. Embrace boredom.

Now, this one may be more challenging since our lifestyles are pretty much set up to avoid it. Most of us have more to do in a day than can realistically fit, and we carry around a portable computer in our pockets that can provide entertainment at all times.

Gone are the days of feeling bored while waiting for an appointment, or for our car to get fixed, or even for an elevator. Now we can pull up Instagram or Twitter at any time and be instantly entertained!

If we eat when we’re bored, we’re doing the same thing. We’re using food to distract ourselves from boredom, instead of eating because we’re actually hungry.

The first step to breaking this habit is to start ignoring the impulse to reach for food whenever we experience boredom. This will disrupt the neurological connection we’ve made between food and pleasure.

We also have to start ignoring the impulse to do anything when we’re bored — watch TV, scroll through Facebook, smoke a cigarette, etc. Ultimately, the more comfortable we are with being bored, the less likely we’ll need food (or anything else) to distract us from it.

What I’ve learned as a dietitian over the past four years is that people who seem to be naturally healthy have a few basic habits they practice. Yes they have healthy daily habits — eating breakfast, getting enough sleep, preparing their own meals — but the habits I’m referring to are the impetus behind those daily habits; they’re the underlying habits that give rise to those healthy daily habits we observe.

And here’s the best part: These habits are ones that you can start adopting at any time.  With these simple actions to take and questions to ask yourself, you’ll be one of those effortlessly healthy people in no time!

They Keep Their Food Simple

Let’s be clear here, simple doesn’t mean boring or tasteless. Simple means that basic ingredients are used, preparation is kept to a minimum, and nutritional content is valued over all else. Snacks consist of fruits, vegetables or nuts (maybe cheese if you’re feeling fancy), and meals are vegetable-based with some starch and protein thrown in. Spices and fresh herbs are used in abundance, and packaged foods are kept to a minimum.

The healthiest people I know follow these guidelines most days. They may occasionally throw in some exotic-sounding ingredient like chia seeds or spirulina, but most of the time they focus on whole foods that can be found at any grocery store.

One of my favorite easy meals is broccoli and chickpeas sautéed in garlic and oil and topped with parmesan. If I’m feeling extra hungry I’ll throw in some pasta, and I always make sure the broccoli is the main component of the meal. It’s simple, quick and tasty, but do you know how many people have turned their noses up at it after asking me for easy, healthy meal ideas? All of them — well except for one of my good friends, but she was following an elimination diet at the time.

It seems that most people think eating healthy has to be complicated. They see “healthy” recipes online with ingredient lists a mile long. They hear health gurus extoling the virtues of all the latest superfoods. It’s understandable why they would think a meal with boring old broccoli and chickpeas couldn’t possibly be the healthiest option out there, but the truth is, a healthy diet doesn’t require complicated recipes and exotic foods.

They Choose Healthfulness Over Taste

Ok, so you know how before I said simple foods don’t have to be boring or tasteless? Well sometimes they just are — raw carrots come to mind. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat them! Most people have this idea in their head that everything they eat has to be the most delicious and satisfying experience ever. They live their life trying to satisfy their various cravings, basing all their food decisions solely on taste.

While this is a perfectly fine way to live, it isn’t completely in line with following a healthy diet. Sometimes (most of the time?) the best food option is the healthiest one, regardless of taste.

Now I know that can sound a little depressing, but the good news is over time you’ll start to actually like these healthy options. It may be because your tastes have changed, or because you like how you feel when you eat them. Either way your body will be getting the nourishment it needs.

They Experiment with Food

There’s no hating on tofu or vegetables with this crowd! People who follow a healthy lifestyle are pretty open minded when it comes to food. They’ll try foods they’ve never had before and experiment with different preparation methods until they find one that works. They rarely get stuck in a food rut because they’re always on the lookout for new ideas.

Letting go of food rules is a big help when it comes to this particular habit. Think you can only have eggs or cereal for breakfast? What about a breakfast salad? Think meat should be the centerpiece of the meal? What if it was just an accompaniment? Break free from your normal food routines and try a food or spice you’ve never had before. Pair two foods that shouldn’t go together and see what you can come up with. Have some fun with your food!

They Think Long-Term

Have you ever noticed that the healthiest people you know don’t get caught up in fad diets or quick fixes? That’s because they know these are temporary in nature, and what they’re looking for are permanent lifestyle changes.

Focusing on longterm outcomes is the key factor in achieving lifestyle change. Improved quality of life, preventing chronic diseases, being able to take care of yourself into old age — these are all longterm goals that can keep us making healthy choices day after day. Start by asking yourself: What do I want my life to look like in 10, 20 or 30 years? What choices could I make today that would help me get there?

Your actions today may not provide you with immediate results, but later on you’ll be thankful that you took them.