Today I looked back to see how far I had come; to see what my diet looks like in relation to what it was a year ago, and it’s quite amazing how many changes I have managed to seamlessly incorporate into my day-to-day eating habits. A big advantage of how gradual this process has been is that I have managed to take my little family along for the ride as well, without any sign of mutiny on the horizon. Of course, this means I haven’t stopped anyone—including myself—from having the beloved but naughty foods. I have just added and added and added all the good ones. We still eat all the wrong stuff, but the percentage has gone down dramatically because there is so much good food in our diet now.

What’s most amazing to me is that this has happened without any difficulty at all. Adding new foods has been an adventure. I find myself with a different mindset in the kitchen. Food preparation is now a chance to make new dishes, to experiment, to learn how to cook many different vegetables that I really hadn’t tried before. It’s also a chance to streamline some meals so that I don’t feel a slave to the kitchen. I have an arsenal of simple ideas for meals. I do some wicked one-pot meals when we’re having cooked fare. And we don’t always have dishes that have a name. Sometimes we just eat meat and five or six veg, with the vegetables prepared in one pot, starting with the ones that take the longest to cook (potato, carrot, sweet potato) and adding others to the top half way through (broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini et cetera). I can make a salad in five minutes with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado, nuts and seeds. Or that can be my starting point and I’ll add English spinach, Chinese cabbage, grated carrot, grated zucchini, celery, capsicum and whatever else I have in the fridge. It’s all done with a wooden board, a sharp knife and an old-fashioned box grater, so there’s not too much washing up later. I might put a bit of sweet fruit in occasonally – diced apple or mandarine segments or slivers of pear. Sometimes I have a salad dressed with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar; sometimes I leave it fairly plain.

Or I pull out the frying pan, throw in a generous amount of coconut oil and fry up eggplant and mushrooms (at the least), throw in a few pinches of himalayan salt then stir all that through the salad for a warming effect on colder days. With one meal a day I have added a huge range of vegetables, and it has been so easy to do. And if I’ve made too much, good. I love leftovers for breakfast.

What I’ve found is that starting simple is the key. I started with salads that had ham and cheese, with bread and butter on the side, then gradually moved to nuts and seeds for the protein and fat content of the salad. The ham and cheese aren’t gone forever – they have a showing occasionally, but they’re not on my plate every day. I’ve changed the quality of bread to the very best I can afford (sprouted bread from the health food shop whenever my pockets are lined with gold!) and have a slice occasionally with pure butter. Whenever I feel like it, really.

The psychological benefit of this kind of formula is immense. When I feel that I’m adding to my diet rather than taking away, I know I’m not missing out on anything. There is no sense of conflict, no feeling that “I should” or “I shouldn’t”, no need of willpower to stick to a diet. I can eat anything I want. I simply choose to eat more vegetables, seeds, nuts and fruit. The rest, it seems, happens by osmosis.

The only thing I’ve found it doesn’t work for is alcohol. But that’s a subject for another day.

Going on holidays can seriously derail your attempts to eat well. We were lucky because we took our own accommodation so had fridge, stove and lots of good fruit and vegetables at our disposal. Still, we were more likely to have salad sandwiches than salad with bread available on the side (my preferred way of serving lunch). We had a few meals out, which was a pleasant change to the constant food preparation which seems to be my life. Still, there were days when I looked back on the food we’d consumed and thought I could have done much better.

Never mind, being home makes it easy to pick up on the good habits again. It’s just a case of starting as you mean to go on. I admit I’ve already eaten crackers for morning tea instead of a piece of fruit or a few nuts and seeds. But that’s already in the past and the next meal is an opportunity to delight in nutrient-dense goodies from nature’s cornucopia. No waiting for tomorrow to do better. Do better the very next time you eat—that’s my mantra.