Erin O'Hara: Naturopath and wellness expert explains why eating healthy is hard

In this day and age, everyone knows the value of eating healthy food - but it's still a complicated process in this day and age.

Diets come with restrictions and many people report feeling trapped by an all-or-nothing mentality - which results in backsliding over busy times.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explains how we can improve our diets and eat better without letting mistakes bring us down.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News talks 'b.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Aaron O'Hara joins us now to talk well being. Good morning,
Good morning. I love this topic because I think that
at the end of the day, we all know how
we should be eating. You join us every Sunday to
have a chat to us just to remind us of
the basics as to how we can live a healthy life.
But it is so hard to eat well or maybe

(00:36):
to eat well all the time.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
I think, Yeah, in this modern day world, we all
know about healthy eating, but it seems to be so
complicated and so hard to keep up with eating healthy.
And I think it's that diet culture that really makes
it challenging, because we think that either we're all in
of like doing healthy eating, or we're all out and

(00:58):
we're blown it and we're kind of eating ice cream
and chocolate and whatever we want to do, and we think, oh,
we'll start tomorrow, we'll start next week, we'll start once
we're kind of got through the challenging Christmas period or
the holidays, and we make this so sort of we
keep moving the goal line of when we're going to
start the healthy eating. And that's what really concerns me
is that we don't need to be so extreme about

(01:20):
healthy eating. You don't have to be all in healthy
eating or all out and eat whatever you want. And
it's kind of like, how can we put those two
together and make it less like dieting and more like
just that's our lifestyle healthy balance of like getting the
good stuff in but also still having the things that
we love to eat. Because the thing is, when we

(01:40):
eat something that's classified as unhealthy, it's not that we
don't know that it's not great for us. I don't
think there's anyone that has a bowl of ice cream
and thinks, oh, this.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Is good for me.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Instead, they usually think, oh, this is kind of something
that I eat sometimes more like a treat. And I
think that that's where we've just got to keep that
balance of know that, you know, don't be too extreme.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Balance is an interesting word, isn't it, Because we use
it a lot when we talk about our life and
across various different aspects of our lives. But I actually
think it's really hard to achieve, and I think you
need to sometimes give yourself a break that you're not
always going to have balance in.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Your life and not trying to be diet perfect. The
interesting thing though about the research on this is that
quite often when people view healthy eating, they actually view
it as being too restrictive, so too low fat, low calorie,
low sugar, and they don't actually have that actually healthy balance.
And that's why when they do do the healthy eating,

(02:37):
they tend to get more cravings and want to eat
more because they're actually underfueling their body. And that's what
makes it actually extra challenging to be in this all
or nothing because when they're in the healthy eating, it's
actually too restrictive, which makes it too challenging to sustain.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
We shouldn't really be restricting anything, should we. I mean,
I mean, there's some things that you should have very occasionally,
and then there's you know, food that you should be
eating data day. But we shouldn't be restricting calories. We
shouldn't be You shouldn't You don't need to starve to
eat well.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
No, you don't need to starve to eat well. And
I think that's where like a good place to start
if you're kind of no you do this flip flop
all or nothing is review your diet for a week
don't change anything, write down everything you eat and drink.
And drink is really important because quite often people get
all the extra sugar from their drinks and then review

(03:34):
it and be like, Okay, what couple of things can
I change? And that's your stepping stone to kind of
creating healthy, balanced lifestyle, healthy eating that's not too restrictive.
And then also just bringing in some new meals and
if you do a meal plan for the next week,
you can be like, Okay, I'm going to pick up
some new recipes, give them a go, put them into
the food plan, do the food shopping on a Sunday,

(03:56):
and you set up for success for the next week.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
He head, thank you so much. Erin really good to
talk to you. We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
For more from the Sunday session with franchess Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks at B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.