“Health by Stealth” was a terminology I heard last night on a TV programme talking about how supermarkets influence our buying and eating habits.

It was referring to how over the years they have slowly changed the recipes and ingredients of some of our favourite foods to be healthier for us, in line with new regulations.

For example, did you know Tesco have reduced the salt content in their corn flakes by 70% over the last 20 years, going from 14g to 4g per 500g of corn flakes. That is just one example of supermarkets changing their recipes, but how do they do it without us realising? After all if something doesn’t taste the same to us, there is a risk we won’t like it and stop buying it…a nightmare scenario for supermarkets.

They manage to do it by reducing the salt or sugar content over a long period of time, chipping away slowly, so subtly that it goes without detection.

The reason I am giving you a TV programme review is because this is THE method to get you to adhere in the long term to new healthy habits and sticking to a diet.

For example, you drink 4 brews a day with 2 teaspoons of sugar in each. That’s 8 teaspoons a day, 2920 teaspoons a year, 11.7kg of sugar a year just in your cups of tea and coffee. When you look at the bigger picture it makes you realise how every little bit add ups.

Now imagine you decide to cut out the sugar...for those of you that have sugar in your drinks, how does it taste when you go sweetless? DISGUSTING right?

So how can we solve the problem of reducing your sugar content whilst keeping the flavour you love? Well by simply reducing one step at a time.

Go from 2 teaspoons down to 1.5, stay at 1.5 until that becomes “the norm” and reduce again, and so on and so on. Eventually you will be sugar free and you won’t even realise it.

The same goes for the other way. If you know you should drink more water and set yourself 2L a day as your goal, but currently you only manage 0.5L, how feasible is it that you’ll consistently be able to drink 2L per day? Not very in my experience.

So like above, increase it slowly until your new amount becomes the norm, then raise it again and again.

This step by step process of making small improvements, chipping away at your old habits will get you to a healthier you without your even realising.

This is how you get healthy the stealthy way.