Let me ask you a question, what did you have for breakfast today?
There’s a good chance you answered cereal, yogurt, toast, eggs, a smoothie, pancakes, oatmeal, waffles, a bagel, or some breakfast bar. It’s interesting of the thousands of different foods we could eat for breakfast, the vast majority of us eat something listed above.
Let me ask you another question. When is the last time you had a bowl of ice cream for breakfast?
Childhood? Never?
So why don’t’ you eat ice cream for breakfast? It’s awesome, after-all!
When I ask people this question, some common answers are “ice cream isn’t good for you,” “it has too much sugar,” or “it’s dessert.”
The majority of people actually struggle to answer this question.
They find themselves confused and the question quite odd. For most, the idea of eating ice cream for breakfast is a concept they can’t even fathom. Finally they settle on an answer like, “because, I just don’t,” or “I don’t know, that would be weird.”
Most people identify ice cream as a dessert. It’s a treat, an occasional indulgence, it doesn’t fit their definition of breakfast. That definition of breakfast has been defined for them by society, marketers, and their own mind.
Think about it, when is the last time you fought the urge to not have ice cream for breakfast? Like really wanted it, but stopped yourself from having it.
My guess is rarely, if ever. You don’t resist the temptation of having ice cream for breakfast, because in your mind it’s not an option. What about at night, after dinner? Does that bit of ice cream, that “dessert,” call your name? When it’s defined as a dessert, it’s easy to justify eating it.
There are two keys to changing your nutritional habits in the long haul.
The first is recognizing unhealthy foods for what they are, and not letting fancy marketing mislead you.
Marketers and food manufacturers have done a wonderful job of disguising nutritionally weak, sugar laden junk-food as health food. Terms like “whole-grain,” “low-fat,” “heart-healthy,” or “all-natural,” are claims almost always found on nutritionally weak processed foods disguising themselves as healthy options.
Foods like fruit smoothies with added sugar, so called “health bars,” “low-fat” crackers, “fun-size” bags of chips and candy bars, sugary cereals, pizza made with “whole grain flat bread”, or “diet” sodas. We willingly eat these foods under a misguided veil of health.
The easiest approach to combat this is to focus on eating single food items. Foods where the ingredient list is, in fact, the food. Foods like banana, chicken, apple, spinach, steak, etc.
The second key is changing how you think and feel about food, and most importantly the language you use to define food.
By changing what you define as healthy, what you define as a treat, what you define as fitting for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, allows you to continuously shift the line forward into a new, healthier, nutritional philosophy.
What would happen if you defined sugary breakfast cereal like you do ice cream, as a treat or something you occasionally eat?
Imagine having the same “that would be weird to have for breakfast” response for Fruit Loops or Honey Bunches of Oats, that you have for ice-cream.
By redefining these foods, you clear the space for a more nutritionally dense breakfast like a vegetable omelet to take its place. A food that fits within your current definition of breakfast.
There is no secret technique to making this shift, other than being cognitively aware of how you define those foods.
Give it a try this week. Try re-defining a food as dessert, or as a treat. Put that food in the same context as ice cream and watch how much easier it is to disconnect and pass it up. Over time you will look back and wonder how you ever ate that sugary cereal every morning in the first place.
You can redefine your entire relationship with food, one food at a time!