How to Make Healthy Eating a Lasting Habit

There are many solutions that can help us stick to healthy eating and maintain weight loss and disease prevention over time. What are they?

Planning. Prevention and foresight are fundamental principles in Judaism, so we can serve Hashem with joy and a good heart. If you're the type who struggles to plan ahead and always does everything at the last minute, you'll need to work on this discipline. It's important to plan on Friday or after Shabbat what the family will eat at the start of the week. If your family always has leftover food from Shabbat, this task moves to Sunday. Also, it's important to plan on Sunday for the rest of the week. On Friday, I usually make a large amount of vegetable soup with chicken, and even if the chicken runs out, there's tasty soup for Sunday. On Monday, you can blend the soup with a manual grinder for variation.

On Sunday, it's important to prepare for the coming days. If I want a legume and grain soup for the week or such a dish, it's essential to soak the legumes from after Shabbat (for the meticulous, start sprouting on Sunday), so later in the week, they are ready to cook (you can freeze them soaked or sprouted for other days). Adding a salad alongside these dishes always makes for a satisfying and healthy meal.

Organization. It's crucial to organize your grocery shopping in advance. If you find yourself without essential staples like grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, eggs, fish, etc., you'll always need the energy to shop and cook on the same day. These two actions together are not simple in such a busy era. Therefore, I recommend always having dry staples of legumes and grains in your pantry, and in the refrigerator, fruits, almonds, nuts, root vegetables, and greens of all kinds. That way, you can always whip up a pot of soup or a stew, or snack on fruits with almonds (a complete meal that includes all food groups).

Knowledge is power. There's no doubt that knowledge is an immense force for change. When I returned to faith thanks to a values seminar and the Hidabroot organization, I gained a lot of knowledge, which gave me the strength to change my lifestyle. Similarly, I surrounded myself with people of this style, and there was always someone to share difficulties, experiences, and more. Also, our eating habits in this generation, for many of us, need improvement and a sort of "return to faith." Therefore, we should surround ourselves with healthy people. It's also important to learn new recipes, new foods, workshops on proper and healthy eating, and so on.

For booking home-group sessions with naturopath Ruth Leah Or-Poltz (at no cost), call 073-2221290