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Below you'll find a short summary of our conversation with Hella Van Laer. You can listen to the full episode on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.
About Hella Van Laer
Hella Van Laer holds a degree in nutrition and dietetics (KU Leuven) and is a certified dietitian, nutrition coach and weight-loss consultant. She previously wrote the book "Breek met hoe je eet" ("Break with the Way You Eat"). She's just released her latest book, 'Dieet Anders' ("Diet Differently"), in which she explains how to avoid diet pitfalls, break bad eating habits, and motivate yourself to stay on track! This isn't just another diet book — it's a book that gives you insight into how our brain works, how we can change our behaviour, and how we can keep it up long-term.
Why eat healthier?
A healthier diet and lifestyle don't just affect how we feel. They also have a huge impact on a whole range of lifestyle-related conditions. Think of obesity and being overweight, insulin resistance that can develop into type 2 diabetes, the risk of cardiovascular disease, and the risk of certain cancers.
Motivating yourself to preventively adopt a healthier lifestyle, in order to avoid conditions you can't yet feel or see, is hard for a lot of people.
But everyone wants to grow old happily and in good health, and that's ultimately what it's all about.
In these Covid times, health is the most important thing in everyone's life, and yet, contradictorily enough, we don't always act accordingly.
Our cupboards are full of cookbooks and diet books, and still we don't always manage to live more healthily on a consistent basis. Why is that?
Making the switch
Despite plenty of good intentions and initiatives, people often get stuck in a pattern of dependency on certain foods, or even uncontrolled eating behaviour. They can't keep it up long-term. They're stuck, so to speak, in a vicious circle: eating sugary snacks gives an instant good feeling in the brain, which in turn drives us to eat even more unhealthy things.
To really change your eating behaviour for the long term, you need a kind of turning point — a moment when you truly realise that something has to change now.
There's no long-term quick fix. Fundamentally changing your eating behaviour takes time, motivation and effort.
And that only works with a clear, concrete plan. Without one, things often go wrong because you don't account for certain pitfalls or how our brain works. Before you know it, you fall back into the trap of temptations lurking around every corner, slipping right back into deeply rooted unhealthy habits.
Two of the biggest pitfalls are chronic sleep deprivation and chronic stress, which throw your hormones off balance.
Under the influence of hormones, not only does our metabolism work less efficiently, but the urge to eat — especially sugary or fatty, unhealthy foods — becomes much stronger too.
You can try loads of diets, but disrupted hormones send out a really powerful signal that's very hard to resist. But you can arm yourself against these pitfalls by first understanding how our brain works.
The reptilian brain
Our brain consists of 3 major parts, and our reptilian brain is one of them.
That's where all our unconscious actions live: instinctive and impulsive behaviour, things we do without thinking, but also our habits.
Of course, we're not reptiles, so we also have a rational, human brain. That's where all our knowledge and planning around healthier eating lives, for example, and that's also where our brakes are.
So why does our reptilian brain take over so often?
These days, we're all rushing past ourselves. Work hard, play hard.
After a tough day full of stress, topped off with a lack of sleep, our rational brain — and therefore our brakes — stops working so well. That's the moment when many people crack and impulsively reach for all kinds of unhealthy, sugary options.
What's more, sugar genuinely does something to your brain: it triggers a certain reward centre, giving us an instant good feeling. Eating sugary snacks sets off a whole bunch of hormones that cause the well-known sugar crashes, which in turn drive us to eat even more. Your reptilian brain takes over, basically setting you up to fail.
That's why it's important to be aware of this mechanism, so you can arm yourself against your own pitfalls.
Behaviour change in the workplace
The key to sticking with a healthier lifestyle long-term is to draw up as clear a plan as possible, to better arm yourself against impulsive temptations. By making your own plan with healthier habits you already have and know, you boost your chances of sticking with changes over time.
Also, simply make sure temptations aren't available. Don't buy unhealthy snacks, so you're less likely to give in, and have healthier alternatives on hand.
Employers also have an important role to play here. We spend a large part of our time at work, and it's important that employers get as many people as possible on board with healthier choices through concrete action. Nice messaging does little if unhealthy snacks are still readily available.
By offering tasty, satisfying, healthier snacks, employers can make a real difference to the health of all their employees — including those who weren't so focused on their health before.
Snackification
Nowadays, many young people follow an eating pattern where they snack in small amounts continuously throughout the day, also known as snackification. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as those snacks are made of nutrients that are good for your body — think vegetables, healthier fats, fibre, quality proteins, and so on.
If you snack all day on things that cause sugar spikes, you'll get insulin spikes throughout the day, which can lead to insulin resistance and, over time, type 2 diabetes.
So choose snacks that truly nourish your body. A good example is nuts, which contain lots of healthier fats. Our bodies need healthier fats — they even protect you against cardiovascular disease.
Of course, even with healthier snacks, you shouldn't be binging all day long. If you're sitting still at your desk all day, it's definitely not a good idea to eat huge amounts of fat, even if it's the healthier kind. Even with healthier snacking, common sense applies — we need to learn to listen to our bodies when they tell us we're full.
Conclusion
A few concrete tips to take charge of your own eating behaviour and try to avoid pitfalls:
- Arm yourself with insights into eating behaviour and how our brain works
- Make sure you have a clear plan
- Hold up a mirror to yourself and be honest — look at where your pitfalls lie
- And finally: start small, but start for real
Every day is a good day to start a healthier lifestyle, but you just have to actually do it! Start with small steps, and realise it'll be a long process with ups and downs, leading to a fantastic result in the long run.