Why don't healthy swaps work for me?

The concept of a healthy swap seems like a win-win scenario. Take a food you’d like to eliminate from your diet, pick your healthier version, and apply where needed. Common healthy swaps see us taking things like chocolate and swapping for something sweet such as dried apricots or dates. Crisps might be swapped for a similar wrapped commodity such as nuts, rice crackers, popcorn or something else that has those salty, and crunchy characteristics. Biscuits are swapped for crackers or wafers and… well you get the picture. 

We’re not going for altogether silly choices here. There is some evidence to suggest that the characteristics of the food is what we crave, so looking for overlapping characteristics in our swap is a good step in the right direction.  There are also swaps that work quite well, these are typically an exact same version of a product that is marketed as healthier or better; such as diet pop, lower fat cheese, and decaf tea/coffee.

The complete elimination of a food in your diet and replacement by another food, can also be unsuccessful and this can happen for a number of reasons. 

1. You still crave the food you want, and so in search of that taste satisfaction, you just eat more to get that hit. It can result in eating more calories or even less balanced diet than if you just ate a square of chocolate or bag of crisps.

2. As soon as well eliminate food from our diet and start to vilify it, it amplifies the brain’s search lights - we see the food everywhere, think about it all the time, avoiding it is a real effort, and not something we can sustain energy for in the longer term, eventually we snap.

3. Without properly considering why you are using the food in the first place, you can still find yourself emotionally eating yourself through a whole bunch of healthy food. It doesn’t matter whether you are eating ice cream or greek yogurt and honey, if you are not eating because of hunger, and something else is prompting you to eat, then it will contribute to less healthy eating patterns and maintained or increased weight. 

What you can do instead:

Identify one snack item that you would like to eat less of. Something that you’d typically ‘swap’ when you are being good. Most people pick things like chocolate, cake, sweets, or crisps. Picking one food is important because it is hard to spread yourself thin over lots of different changes, and it is hard to notice the change you are making. 

Next think over the past week and be realistic about the amount you have eaten, not a food diary, but perhaps an estimate that you can put in numbers. How many chocolate bars, packets of crisps… If it is really hard to remember you may just want to pick yesterday and take it from there. 

Set yourself a goal of how much you’d rather eat - note this cannot be NONE!! It is important that if a food is something you really enjoy, you don’t want to punish yourself by removing it entirely. 

Think about things you can do to support yourself in achieving this goal. It may be that paying attention to the packet sizes you buy could be helpful (see my earlier blog on this). 

Commit to this - when you get the urge to eat that snack, pause for 5-10 minutes first and really focus on what you want from the snack. Think about how you feel at that time - are you angry, upset, stressed, bored? What are you expecting from that snack to help you at that very moment in time? I know we all have busy lives, but this thinking time is critical to any change you are going to make. Taking time to really understand why you are turning to the food, will help you to make truly healthy swaps that are sustainable for you.

Make a few notes on the thoughts and feelings that come up for you and if you still want the snack, then eat the amount you decided would be okay. As long as you’ve done the thinking that’s the important bit. 

After a few days, review your notes on what you were thinking and feeling when you went for the snack. Think about whether this tells you about any other important changes you need to make in your life overall to help support your weight loss goals? It is not usually about the food, we are eating in response to stress, in response to emotions, an environment that makes it difficult to have a proper meal, or because we need a break - which one of these applies to you?

The only truly healthy swap is when you swap food for a different solution to your emotional ups and downs. 

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