\ud83e\udd57 If you browse through your Instagram feed you soon get the idea that every meal you’ve ever made is boring and not unhealthy. You could call this a positive stimulation to add more variety to your diet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udd75\ufe0f\u200d\u2642\u200d Based on my personal and professional experience, however, I believe there is also a ‘dark side’ to this that is often overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udcdd When I ask my clients to compose what they believe is a healthy diet for 1 week, I often see 7 different types of breakfast, lunch and dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udcb0 Clearly, this feels very natural to many people and you’re surely gonna score a lot of likes if you manage to put only half of this on Instagram #doingitforthegram. Further inquiry often reveals that it does come at a cost though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83e\udde0 Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are known to preserve their brainpower by reducing their ‘cognitive load’ or ‘decision fatigue’. Simply put: they minimize the amount of ‘stupid’ decisions they need to make to preserve brain power for other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udc55 The most visible result: billionaires wearing the same clothes every day. I believe the same applies to diets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udcc8 The need for variety by cooking up different recipes every day is often overestimated and comes at the cost of being able to persist in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83e\udd51 Moreover, even though variety can add vitamins and minerals to your diet that you otherwise wouldn’t eat that often, it can also increase the chance of eating sub-optimally, as you cannot eat that perfectly nutritious and macro-balanced meal every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\ud83d\udc49 Self-coaching tip:
Ask yourself: ‘Could your believed need to come up with new recipes cost you the mental energy that you need to persist a healthy lifestyle in the long run?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many of my clients feel that it’s important to create a large variety of meals throughout the week. However, the increased cognitive load often counters most of the positive effects. Choose wisely.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nutrition"],"yoast_head":"\n