Healthy Eating: The Beginner’s Guide on

How to Eat Healthy and Stick to It

Healthy eating. It's something everyone knows they should do, but few of us do as
consistently as we would like. The purpose of this guide is to share practical strategies
for how to eat healthy and break down the science of why we often fail to do so.

Now, I don't claim to have a perfect diet, but my research and writing on behavioral
psychology and habit formation has helped me develop a few simple strategies for
building and strengthening a healthy eating habit without much effort or thought.

You can click the links below to jump to a particular section or simply scroll down to
read everything. At the end of this page, you’ll find a complete list of all the articles I
have written on healthy eating.

I. The Science of Healthy Eating

 Why We Crave Junk Food

 How Food Scientists Create Cravings

II. How to Make Healthy Eating Easier

 The Importance of Environment for Healthy Eating

 How to Eat Healthy Without Noticing

 What Should I Eat?

  Two Simple Ways to Eat Healthy

 How to Eat Whatever You Want Without Feeling Guilty

III. How to Stick to a Healthy Eating Habit

 Address the Root Problem of Unhealthy Eating

 How to Say No to Temptation

 This One Phrase Will Help You Eat Healthy Time After Time

 Where to Go From Here

I. The Science of Healthy Eating

Every nutritionist and diet guru talks about what to eat. Instead, I'd like to
discuss why we eat the way we do and how we can change that. The purpose of this
guide is to share the science and strategy you need to get the results you want.

Now, the benefits of good nutrition are fairly obvious to most of us. You have more
energy, your health improves, and your productivity blossoms. Healthy eating also plays
a huge role in maintaining a healthy weight, which means a decreased risk of type 2
diabetes, certain cancers, heart problems, high blood pressure, and a host of other
health ailments. (Genetics also plays a significant role. I'm not some crazy person who
thinks genes don't matter.)

But if there are so many good reasons for healthy eating, why is it so difficult to actually
do? To answer that question, we should start by learning why we crave junk food.

Before we talk about how to get started, let's pause for just a second. If you're enjoying
this article on healthy eating, then you'll probably find my other writing on performance
and human behavior useful. Each week, I share self-improvement tips based on proven
scientific research through my free email newsletter.

To join now, just enter your email address below and click “Get Updates!”

GET UPDATES
Don't see a signup form? Send me a message here and I'll add you right away.

Why We Crave Junk Food

Steven Witherly is a food scientist who has spent the last 20 years studying what makes
certain foods more addictive than others. Much of the science that follows is from his
excellent report, Why Humans Like Junk Food.
According to Witherly, when you eat tasty food, there are two factors that make the
experience pleasurable.

First, there is the sensation of eating the food. This includes what it tastes like (salty,
sweet, umami, etc.), what it smells like, and how it feels in your mouth. This last quality
— known as “orosensation” — can be particularly important. Food companies will spend
millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip. Food
scientists will test for the perfect amount of fizzle in a soda. These elements all combine
to create the sensation that your brain associates with a particular food or drink.

The second factor is the actual macronutrient makeup of the food — the blend of
proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that it contains. In the case of junk food, food
manufacturers are looking for a perfect combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites
your brain and gets you coming back for more.

Here’s how they do it…

How Food Scientists Create Cravings

There is a range of factors that scientists and food manufacturers use to make food more
addictive.

Dynamic contrast. Dynamic contrast refers to a combination of different sensations

in the same food. In the words of Witherly, foods with dynamic contrast have “an edible
shell that goes crunch followed by something soft or creamy and full of taste-active
compounds. This rule applies to a variety of our favorite food structures — the
caramelized top of a creme brulee, a slice of pizza, or an Oreo cookie — the brain finds
crunching through something like this very novel and thrilling.”
Salivary response. Salivation is part of the experience of eating food, and the more a
food causes you to salivate, the more it will swim throughout your mouth and cover your
taste buds. For example, emulsified foods like butter, chocolate, salad dressing, ice
cream, and mayonnaise promote a salivary response that helps to lather your taste buds
with goodness. This is one reason why many people enjoy foods that have sauces or
glazes on them. The result is that foods that promote salivation do a happy little tap
dance on your brain and taste better than ones that don’t.

Rapid food meltdown and vanishing caloric density. Foods that rapidly vanish
or “melt in your mouth” signal to your brain that you’re not eating as much as you
actually are. In other words, these foods literally tell your brain that you’re not full, even
though you’re eating a lot of calories.

In his best-selling book, Salt Sugar Fat (audiobook), author Michael Moss describes a

conversation with Witherly that explains vanishing caloric density perfectly…

He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the
most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure
pleasure.”
“I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right
in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed
foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the
Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s
uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly
said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it …
you can just keep eating it forever.”

Sensory-specific response. Your brain likes variety. When it comes to food, if you

experience the same taste over and over again, then you start to get less pleasure from it.
In other words, the sensitivity of that specific sensor will decrease over time. This can
happen in just minutes.

Junk foods, however, are designed to avoid this sensory specific response. They provide
enough taste to be interesting (your brain doesn’t get tired of eating them), but it’s not
so stimulating that your sensory response is dulled. This is why you can swallow an
entire bag of potato chips and still be ready to eat another. To your brain,
the crunch and sensation of eating Doritos is novel and interesting every time.

Calorie density. Junk foods are designed to convince your brain that it is

getting nutrition, but to not fill you up. Receptors in your mouth and stomach tell your
brain about the mixture of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in a particular food, and
how filling that food is for your body. Junk food provides just enough calories that your
brain says, “Yes, this will give you some energy” but not so many calories that you think
“That’s enough, I’m full.” The result is that you crave the food to begin with, but it takes
quite some time to feel full from it.

Memories of past eating experiences. This is where the psychobiology of junk food

really works against you. When you eat something tasty (say, a bag of potato chips), your
brain registers that feeling. The next time you see that food, smell that food, or even
read about that food, your brain starts to trigger the memories and responses that came
when you ate it. These memories can actually cause physical responses like salivation
and create the “mouth-watering” craving that you get when thinking about your favorite
foods.

These factors all combine to make processed food tasty and desirable to our human
brains. When you combine the science behind these foods with the incredible prevalence
of food (cheap fast food everywhere), eating healthy becomes very hard to do.

II. How to Make Healthy Eating Easier

Most people think that building better habits or changing your actions is all about
willpower or motivation. But the more I learn, the more I believe that the number one
driver of behavior change is your environment.
Your environment has an incredible ability to shape your behavior. Nowhere is this
more true than with food. What we eat on a daily basis is often a result of what we are
presented.

Let me share an interesting experiment to show you exactly what I mean…

The Importance of Environment for Healthy Eating

Anne Thorndike is a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in
Boston. Thorndike and her colleagues conducted a six-month study that was published
in the American Journal of Public Health.

This study secretly took place in the hospital cafeteria and helped thousands of people
develop healthy eating habits without changing their willpower or motivation in the
slightest way. Thorndike and her team utilized a concept known as “choice architecture.”
Choice architecture is just a fancy word for changing the way the food and drinks are
displayed, but, as it turns out, it makes a big difference.

The researchers started by changing the choice architecture of the drinks in the
cafeteria. Originally, there were three main refrigerators, all of which were filled with
soda. The researchers made sure that water was added to each of those units and also
placed baskets of bottled water throughout the room.

The image below depicts what the room looked like before the changes (Figure A) and
after the changes (Figure B). The dark boxes indicate areas where bottled water is
available.
Image Source: American Journal of Public Health, April 2012.
What happened? Over the next 3 months, the number of soda sales dropped by 11.4
percent. Meanwhile, bottled water sales increased by 25.8 percent. Similar adjustments
and results were made with food options. Nobody said a word to the visitors who ate at
the cafeteria. The researchers simply changed the environment and people naturally
followed suit.

Choice architecture is even more important when you're already stressed, tired, or
distracted. If you're already worn-down, you’re probably not going to go through a lot of
effort to cook a healthy dinner or fit in a workout. You’ll grab or do whatever is easiest.

That means that if you take just a little bit of time today to organize your room, your
office, your kitchen, and other areas, then that adjustment in choice architecture can
guide you toward better choices even when your willpower is fading. Design for laziness.
How to Eat Healthy Without Noticing
Brian Wansink is a professor at Cornell University, and he has completed a variety of
studies on how your environment shapes your eating decisions. Many of the ideas below
come from his popular book, Mindless Eating (audiobook). Here are some of his best
practical strategies for using choice architecture to make healthy eating easier.

1. Use smaller plates. Bigger plates mean bigger portions. And that means you eat
more. According to a study conducted by Wansink and his research team, if you made a
simple change and served your dinner on 10-inch plates instead of a 12-inch plate, you
would eat 22% less food over the course of the next year.

On a related note, if you’re thinking “I’ll just put less food on my plate” … it’s not that
simple. The picture below explains why. When you eat a small portion off of a large
plate, your mind feels unsatisfied. Meanwhile, the same portion will feel more filling
when eaten off of a small plate. The circles in the image below are the same size, but
your brain (and stomach) doesn’t view them that way.

This image shows how small portion sizes can look filling on a small plate, but sparse on
a large plate.
2. Want to drink less alcohol or soda? Use tall, slender glasses instead of
short, fat ones.
Take a look at the image below. Is the horizontal or vertical line longer?

Like the lines in this photo, vertical glasses will look bigger than horizontal ones and will
therefore naturally help you drink less.
As it turns out, both lines are the same length, but our brain has a tendency to
overestimate vertical lines. In other words, taller drinks look bigger to our eyes than
round, horizontal mugs do. And because height makes things look bigger than width,
you’ll actually drink less from taller glasses. In fact, you will typically drink about 20%
less from a tall, slender glass than you would from a short, fat glass. (Hat tip to Darya
Pino for originally sharing this image and idea.)

3. Use plates that have a high contrast color with your food. As I mentioned
in this article, when the color of your plate matches the color of your food, you naturally
serve yourself more because your brain has trouble distinguishing the portion size from
the plate. Because of this, dark green and dark blue make great plate colors because they
contrast with light foods like pasta and potatoes (which means you’re likely to serve less
of them), but don’t contrast very much with leafy greens and vegetables (which means
you’re likely to put more of them on your plate).

4. Display healthy foods in a prominent place. For example, you could place a

bowl of fruits or nuts near the front door or somewhere else that you pass by before you
leave the house. When you’re hungry and in a rush, you are more likely to grab the first
thing you see.

5. Wrap unhealthy foods in tin foil. Wrap healthy foods in plastic wrap. The
old saying, “out of sight, out of mind” turns out to have some truth to it. Eating isn’t just
a physical event, but also an emotional one. Your mind often determines what it wants
to eat based on what your eyes see. Thus, if you hide unhealthy foods by wrapping them
up or tucking them away in less prominent places, then you are less likely to eat them.

6. Keep healthy foods in larger packages and containers, and unhealthy

foods in smaller ones. Big boxes and containers tend to catch your eye more, take up
space in your kitchen and pantry, and otherwise get in your way. As a result, you’re more
likely to notice them and eat them. Meanwhile, smaller items can hide in your kitchen
for months. (Just take a look at what you have lying around right now. It’s probably
small cans and containers.)

Bonus tip: if you buy a large box of something unhealthy, you can re-package it into
smaller Ziploc bags or containers, which should make it less likely that you’ll binge and
eat a lot at once.

What Should I Eat?

As I mentioned at the outset, this is not a guide about what to eat. It's a guide about why
we eat the way we do and how to do something about it. That said, I'll offer two
suggestions regarding what to put on your plate.

1. Eat more greens.  There isn't a consensus on the best diet, but pretty much
everyone agrees on one thing: eat more veggies. You'll be hard-pressed to find a single
diet that doesn't think eating more plants is a good idea.
2. Eat a variety of foods. As we covered earlier, the brain craves novelty. While you
may not be able to replicate the crunchy/creamy contrast of an Oreo, you can vary your
diet enough to keep things interesting. For example, you could dip a carrot (crunchy) in
some hummus (creamy) and get a novel sensation. Similarly, finding ways to add new
spices and flavors to your dishes can make eating healthy foods a more desirable
experience.

Healthy eating doesn’t have to be bland. Mix up your foods to get different sensations
and you may find it easier than eating the same foods over and over again. (At some
point, however, you may have to fall in love with boredom.)

Healthy Eating: The Beginner’s Guide on

How to Eat Healthy and Stick to It

Healthy eating. It's something everyone knows they should do, but few of us do as
consistently as we would like. The purpose of this guide is to share practical strategies
for how to eat healthy and break down the science of why we often fail to do so.

Now, I don't claim to have a perfect diet, but my research and writing on behavioral
psychology and habit formation has helped me develop a few simple strategies for
building and strengthening a healthy eating habit without much effort or thought.

You can click the links below to jump to a particular section or simply scroll down to
read everything. At the end of this page, you’ll find a complete list of all the articles I
have written on healthy eating.

I. The Science of Healthy Eating

  Why We Crave Junk Food

 How Food Scientists Create Cravings

II. How to Make Healthy Eating Easier

 The Importance of Environment for Healthy Eating

 How to Eat Healthy Without Noticing

 What Should I Eat?

 Two Simple Ways to Eat Healthy

 How to Eat Whatever You Want Without Feeling Guilty

III. How to Stick to a Healthy Eating Habit

 Address the Root Problem of Unhealthy Eating

 How to Say No to Temptation

 This One Phrase Will Help You Eat Healthy Time After Time

 Where to Go From Here

I. The Science of Healthy Eating
Every nutritionist and diet guru talks about what to eat. Instead, I'd like to
discuss why we eat the way we do and how we can change that. The purpose of this
guide is to share the science and strategy you need to get the results you want.

Now, the benefits of good nutrition are fairly obvious to most of us. You have more
energy, your health improves, and your productivity blossoms. Healthy eating also plays
a huge role in maintaining a healthy weight, which means a decreased risk of type 2
diabetes, certain cancers, heart problems, high blood pressure, and a host of other
health ailments. (Genetics also plays a significant role. I'm not some crazy person who
thinks genes don't matter.)

But if there are so many good reasons for healthy eating, why is it so difficult to actually
do? To answer that question, we should start by learning why we crave junk food.
Before we talk about how to get started, let's pause for just a second. If you're enjoying
this article on healthy eating, then you'll probably find my other writing on performance
and human behavior useful. Each week, I share self-improvement tips based on proven
scientific research through my free email newsletter.

To join now, just enter your email address below and click “Get Updates!”

GET UPDATES
Don't see a signup form? Send me a message here and I'll add you right away.

Why We Crave Junk Food

Steven Witherly is a food scientist who has spent the last 20 years studying what makes
certain foods more addictive than others. Much of the science that follows is from his
excellent report, Why Humans Like Junk Food.

According to Witherly, when you eat tasty food, there are two factors that make the
experience pleasurable.

First, there is the sensation of eating the food. This includes what it tastes like (salty,
sweet, umami, etc.), what it smells like, and how it feels in your mouth. This last quality
— known as “orosensation” — can be particularly important. Food companies will spend
millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip. Food
scientists will test for the perfect amount of fizzle in a soda. These elements all combine
to create the sensation that your brain associates with a particular food or drink.

The second factor is the actual macronutrient makeup of the food — the blend of
proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that it contains. In the case of junk food, food
manufacturers are looking for a perfect combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites
your brain and gets you coming back for more.
Here’s how they do it…

How Food Scientists Create Cravings

There is a range of factors that scientists and food manufacturers use to make food more
addictive.

Dynamic contrast. Dynamic contrast refers to a combination of different sensations

in the same food. In the words of Witherly, foods with dynamic contrast have “an edible
shell that goes crunch followed by something soft or creamy and full of taste-active
compounds. This rule applies to a variety of our favorite food structures — the
caramelized top of a creme brulee, a slice of pizza, or an Oreo cookie — the brain finds
crunching through something like this very novel and thrilling.”

Salivary response. Salivation is part of the experience of eating food, and the more a
food causes you to salivate, the more it will swim throughout your mouth and cover your
taste buds. For example, emulsified foods like butter, chocolate, salad dressing, ice
cream, and mayonnaise promote a salivary response that helps to lather your taste buds
with goodness. This is one reason why many people enjoy foods that have sauces or
glazes on them. The result is that foods that promote salivation do a happy little tap
dance on your brain and taste better than ones that don’t.

Rapid food meltdown and vanishing caloric density. Foods that rapidly vanish
or “melt in your mouth” signal to your brain that you’re not eating as much as you
actually are. In other words, these foods literally tell your brain that you’re not full, even
though you’re eating a lot of calories.

In his best-selling book, Salt Sugar Fat (audiobook), author Michael Moss describes a

conversation with Witherly that explains vanishing caloric density perfectly…
He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the
most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure
pleasure.”
“I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right
in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed
foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the
Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s
uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly
said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it …
you can just keep eating it forever.”

Sensory-specific response. Your brain likes variety. When it comes to food, if you

experience the same taste over and over again, then you start to get less pleasure from it.
In other words, the sensitivity of that specific sensor will decrease over time. This can
happen in just minutes.

Junk foods, however, are designed to avoid this sensory specific response. They provide
enough taste to be interesting (your brain doesn’t get tired of eating them), but it’s not
so stimulating that your sensory response is dulled. This is why you can swallow an
entire bag of potato chips and still be ready to eat another. To your brain,
the crunch and sensation of eating Doritos is novel and interesting every time.

Calorie density. Junk foods are designed to convince your brain that it is

getting nutrition, but to not fill you up. Receptors in your mouth and stomach tell your
brain about the mixture of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in a particular food, and
how filling that food is for your body. Junk food provides just enough calories that your
brain says, “Yes, this will give you some energy” but not so many calories that you think
“That’s enough, I’m full.” The result is that you crave the food to begin with, but it takes
quite some time to feel full from it.

Memories of past eating experiences. This is where the psychobiology of junk food

really works against you. When you eat something tasty (say, a bag of potato chips), your
brain registers that feeling. The next time you see that food, smell that food, or even
read about that food, your brain starts to trigger the memories and responses that came
when you ate it. These memories can actually cause physical responses like salivation
and create the “mouth-watering” craving that you get when thinking about your favorite
foods.

These factors all combine to make processed food tasty and desirable to our human
brains. When you combine the science behind these foods with the incredible prevalence
of food (cheap fast food everywhere), eating healthy becomes very hard to do.

II. How to Make Healthy Eating Easier

Most people think that building better habits or changing your actions is all about
willpower or motivation. But the more I learn, the more I believe that the number one
driver of behavior change is your environment.

Your environment has an incredible ability to shape your behavior. Nowhere is this
more true than with food. What we eat on a daily basis is often a result of what we are
presented.

Let me share an interesting experiment to show you exactly what I mean…

The Importance of Environment for Healthy Eating

Anne Thorndike is a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in
Boston. Thorndike and her colleagues conducted a six-month study that was published
in the American Journal of Public Health.

This study secretly took place in the hospital cafeteria and helped thousands of people
develop healthy eating habits without changing their willpower or motivation in the
slightest way. Thorndike and her team utilized a concept known as “choice architecture.”
Choice architecture is just a fancy word for changing the way the food and drinks are
displayed, but, as it turns out, it makes a big difference.

The researchers started by changing the choice architecture of the drinks in the
cafeteria. Originally, there were three main refrigerators, all of which were filled with
soda. The researchers made sure that water was added to each of those units and also
placed baskets of bottled water throughout the room.

The image below depicts what the room looked like before the changes (Figure A) and
after the changes (Figure B). The dark boxes indicate areas where bottled water is
available.

Image Source: American Journal of Public Health, April 2012.

What happened? Over the next 3 months, the number of soda sales dropped by 11.4
percent. Meanwhile, bottled water sales increased by 25.8 percent. Similar adjustments
and results were made with food options. Nobody said a word to the visitors who ate at
the cafeteria. The researchers simply changed the environment and people naturally
followed suit.

Choice architecture is even more important when you're already stressed, tired, or
distracted. If you're already worn-down, you’re probably not going to go through a lot of
effort to cook a healthy dinner or fit in a workout. You’ll grab or do whatever is easiest.

That means that if you take just a little bit of time today to organize your room, your
office, your kitchen, and other areas, then that adjustment in choice architecture can
guide you toward better choices even when your willpower is fading. Design for laziness.

How to Eat Healthy Without Noticing

Brian Wansink is a professor at Cornell University, and he has completed a variety of
studies on how your environment shapes your eating decisions. Many of the ideas below
come from his popular book, Mindless Eating (audiobook). Here are some of his best
practical strategies for using choice architecture to make healthy eating easier.

1. Use smaller plates. Bigger plates mean bigger portions. And that means you eat
more. According to a study conducted by Wansink and his research team, if you made a
simple change and served your dinner on 10-inch plates instead of a 12-inch plate, you
would eat 22% less food over the course of the next year.

On a related note, if you’re thinking “I’ll just put less food on my plate” … it’s not that
simple. The picture below explains why. When you eat a small portion off of a large
plate, your mind feels unsatisfied. Meanwhile, the same portion will feel more filling
when eaten off of a small plate. The circles in the image below are the same size, but
your brain (and stomach) doesn’t view them that way.
This image shows how small portion sizes can look filling on a small plate, but sparse on
a large plate.
2. Want to drink less alcohol or soda? Use tall, slender glasses instead of
short, fat ones.

Take a look at the image below. Is the horizontal or vertical line longer?

Like the lines in this photo, vertical glasses will look bigger than horizontal ones and will
therefore naturally help you drink less.
As it turns out, both lines are the same length, but our brain has a tendency to
overestimate vertical lines. In other words, taller drinks look bigger to our eyes than
round, horizontal mugs do. And because height makes things look bigger than width,
you’ll actually drink less from taller glasses. In fact, you will typically drink about 20%
less from a tall, slender glass than you would from a short, fat glass. (Hat tip to Darya
Pino for originally sharing this image and idea.)

3. Use plates that have a high contrast color with your food. As I mentioned
in this article, when the color of your plate matches the color of your food, you naturally
serve yourself more because your brain has trouble distinguishing the portion size from
the plate. Because of this, dark green and dark blue make great plate colors because they
contrast with light foods like pasta and potatoes (which means you’re likely to serve less
of them), but don’t contrast very much with leafy greens and vegetables (which means
you’re likely to put more of them on your plate).

4. Display healthy foods in a prominent place. For example, you could place a

bowl of fruits or nuts near the front door or somewhere else that you pass by before you
leave the house. When you’re hungry and in a rush, you are more likely to grab the first
thing you see.

5. Wrap unhealthy foods in tin foil. Wrap healthy foods in plastic wrap. The
old saying, “out of sight, out of mind” turns out to have some truth to it. Eating isn’t just
a physical event, but also an emotional one. Your mind often determines what it wants
to eat based on what your eyes see. Thus, if you hide unhealthy foods by wrapping them
up or tucking them away in less prominent places, then you are less likely to eat them.

6. Keep healthy foods in larger packages and containers, and unhealthy

foods in smaller ones. Big boxes and containers tend to catch your eye more, take up
space in your kitchen and pantry, and otherwise get in your way. As a result, you’re more
likely to notice them and eat them. Meanwhile, smaller items can hide in your kitchen
for months. (Just take a look at what you have lying around right now. It’s probably
small cans and containers.)
Bonus tip: if you buy a large box of something unhealthy, you can re-package it into
smaller Ziploc bags or containers, which should make it less likely that you’ll binge and
eat a lot at once.

What Should I Eat?

As I mentioned at the outset, this is not a guide about what to eat. It's a guide about why
we eat the way we do and how to do something about it. That said, I'll offer two
suggestions regarding what to put on your plate.

1. Eat more greens.  There isn't a consensus on the best diet, but pretty much
everyone agrees on one thing: eat more veggies. You'll be hard-pressed to find a single
diet that doesn't think eating more plants is a good idea.

2. Eat a variety of foods. As we covered earlier, the brain craves novelty. While you
may not be able to replicate the crunchy/creamy contrast of an Oreo, you can vary your
diet enough to keep things interesting. For example, you could dip a carrot (crunchy) in
some hummus (creamy) and get a novel sensation. Similarly, finding ways to add new
spices and flavors to your dishes can make eating healthy foods a more desirable
experience.

Healthy eating doesn’t have to be bland. Mix up your foods to get different sensations
and you may find it easier than eating the same foods over and over again. (At some
point, however, you may have to fall in love with boredom.)