The Power of More

Deborah Barchi
4 min readMar 2, 2020

Adding healthy habits to your day

Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash

A diet junkie. I could add that to my resume, since it seems to be a lifelong occupation for me. But over the past few months I have made a small but significant change.

Instead of always thinking about having to eat less, or doing without, I have started to focus on eating and doing more to achieve a healthy weight and a healthier life.

It seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Eating more but reaching a healthier weight? The secret I believe is in what you choose to add more of, rather than what you choose less of. Let’s face it, less feels like denial, but more feels like an easy change.

Here’s some examples of easy ways of adding more to achieve your weight and other health goals:

  • Add more vegetables. There are so many healthy, delicious vegetables available in our local markets; and many excellent ways to prepare them: salads, sautes, steamed or in soups and stews. Find a good cookbook, ask a friend for ideas, or use your imagination. Whatever you do, eating more vegetables will soon make a difference.
  • Which segues easily to cooking more. Our busy lives make it all too easy to skip cooking in favor of take out or restaurant food . But how easy it is to lose control when you are not doing the cooking.
  • Too many slices of cheese-laden pizza, a gut-busting bowl of spaghetti and meatballs…we’ve all been there. When we do the cooking, though, we are much more likely to choose a variety of healthy, fresh food, to prepare it conscientiously, and to control our portions.
Photo by Fatima Akram on Unsplash
  • Choose more whole grains and fiber rich foods. Once you start eating whole grain breads and cereals, white flour tastes, well, tasteless. And as far as our bodies are concerned, there’s very little difference between a slice of white bread and a cupcake. There are many fiber rich whole foods out there; you can tell them by how much your teeth enjoy crunching them (and I’m not talking about potato chips here!) Oh, and while we’re on the subject —
Deborah Barchi

Deborah Barchi has recently retired from her career as a librarian and now has time to read, explore nature, and write poetry and essays.