Taste buds training is a crucial way of getting your tongue to fall in line with your new diet plan as you embark on a weight-losing journey. It is logical but not so simple. Our taste buds have spend a life time loving some foods and hating others. Changing these habits is going to be one of your most challenging tasks as you try to lose weight.
I have being down that road before. Trying to stop eating something I know is not good for me. Sometimes it is after you’d binged on several plates of ice cream you’d recall with a large dose of guilt your resolution to stay off junk. It is hard. But I never consider that taste buds training could be as important as the exercises we do. Matter of fact, it could be the single most important training we need to do.
Lets face it, sabotaging a well planned weight-loss program could easily come down to a whiff of the smell of pancakes wafting into your living room from your neighbor’s kitchen. That smell could easily wake up cravings for all those tasty, nice looking pastries you painstakingly avoided for months. Your taste buds start to itch. The salivary glands pump fluids into your mouth. And just like that, you must have these things. Like a pregnant woman, you just have to satisfy those wicked taste buds.
Take it from a man who has being through that hell: taste buds training should be as methodical as your exercise and gym schedule. It must be a conscious effort. Or all your months of work will be dumped in extra calories in your body. Try these tips and see how they work for you.
Try Foods You Once Hated
And I don’t mean those sugary foods and their ilks. I am talking stuff like veggies. The thing about taste buds is, as we grow older, foods we once thought we hated can become bearable. This is because the taste buds are becoming less sensitive. I can’t believe I used to hate onions, lettuce and cabbage. Seriously, I can’t eat enough of them now.
Mixing-up Foods is Good for Taste Buds Training
There are certain foods we really don’t care about. We don’t hate them. We don’t like them. If some of these food items fall into the category of healthy foods, a good taste buds training technique is to regularly mix them up with foods you like. This way, before you know it, your taste buds sort of like them very much. This is a very good way to make kids get used to eating veggies. Just mix them with their favourite foods.
Never Rush The Process
It is ideal if you can immediately swap your diet for healthy foods only. But the reality is, it takes time and it is better to do it gradually. For instance, switching from white rice to whole grain brown rice should be done without causing a shock to the taste buds. Remember, taste buds training is about getting your tongue to love new things. In the case of the rice, you can add a small amount of brown rice to the white rice before cooking. Over time, gradually increase the ratio of brown to white rice in the pot until you finally achieve 100% brown rice.
Giving the whole process time is also important in beverages. I remember when I decided to reduce the amount of sugar in my tea. I thought I could just make a decision and just do it. I kept going back to my old habits. What worked was reducing my sugar intake one cube at a time over several months. Now, I am a zero-cube-in-tea dude. I applied the same process to milk. Just hot, plain, refreshing tea anytime I wish.
Read Up on Foods
This is a good way to develop a taste for particular foods. I have noticed this trend in people these days. When you ask why they love eating a food that looks unsavory to the eyes. You hardly hear them say it tastes nice. Instead they reel off a string of health benefits and the numerous minerals you get from eating that food. That was how I tricked my taste buds into liking snails. Seriously, I wasn’t going to allow my body miss all those nutrients in that mollusc. Basically, if you know about vitamins and minerals in a particular food, you are more likely to eat it.
Here is a phrase I just love that is related to taste buds training: sensory-specific satiety. A seriously fancy phrase which refers to what you’ve being reading all this time. If you know or have some fancy and effective taste buds training tricks, do share it with us.
