Making healthy eating a lifestyle is a noble course worth pursuing. It improves your health, raises your energy levels, and reduces disease. But, healthy eating can be overwhelming and difficult to maintain due to too much information surrounding the topic.
80 % of Americans fail to meet their recommended vegetable and fruit intake.¹ The key to getting started in making lasting healthy eating choices is by keeping it simple and fun. Read on for ways to save time and energy while making lasting changes towards healthy eating.
Easy Ways to Form and Maintain a Healthy Eating Lifestyle
To make healthy eating a lifestyle, you need to make small changes at a go and stick to them. Use a single strategy at a time. Here are ways to simplify healthy eating habits and make them a lifestyle.
Prepare a Grocery Shopping List Ahead of Time
Preparing a grocery list in advance will help you stay on track and avoid buying unhealthy items. Make it a habit to go shopping when your stock is almost running out. Do not wait till the last minute to avoid temptations.
In addition, limit your shopping to grocery stores. This is where you will find fresh and wholesome foods as opposed to processed and shelved canned food. Although canned foods are convenient, they are loaded with excessive salt and sugar.
Finally, before buying any food items, be sure to check the labels. They contain information regarding the ingredients, calories, preservatives, and other additives. By checking the labels you will be able to avoid certain items you do not want in your diet
Get Rid of Junk Food
Having junk food lying around your house will make it difficult to eat healthy not to mention make it a lifestyle. By throwing away junk food, you will avoid cravings. While you may not be able to stop eating junk at once, reducing the amounts you buy is a great step. In fact, fast food consumption reduces as people age.²
Slowly replace junk with healthier choices until you get used to it. Otherwise, rushing into healthy foods at once may backfire. For instance, in place of soda, blend your own fruit juice.
Set Realistic and Specific Goals
The truth is, aching a healthy eating lifestyle cannot happen overnight. As such, you need to be realistic when you set your health goals. You would rather set small, achievable goals as opposed to big, unsustainable ones.
For instance, if your goal is to stop consuming red meat, start by reducing its intake using suitable replacements. In place of red meat, take white meat alongside vegetables. Or if you take red meat four days a week, reducing that to twice a week is achievable.
Watch How You Prepare Your Meals
Preparing a healthy type of food in an unhealthy manner beats logic. Cooking methods like deep frying and excessive salting make food less nutritional and unhealthy. So, instead of deep-frying, consider sauteing, baking and grilling.
On the other hand, healthy meals don’t have to be bland and boring. This misconception is what makes people shy away from eating healthily. You can make your meals hearty and delicious using natural spices such as ginger. Better yet, enroll in a healthy cooking class to help you cook healthy meals for life.
Prepare Your Meals Ahead of Time
Meal prepping involves outlining what you will eat for an entire week. As a result, you will avoid the temptation to grab a takeaway or worry about what to cook for dinner. In addition, meal prepping saves you time and money.
To get started on meal prepping, set aside a day to cook meals sufficient for a week. Package them nicely and freeze them. For the fruits and vegetables, pre-chop them and keep them where you can see them. This way, you will have to eat them.
Develop a Healthy Eating Lifestyle With the Above Practices
Replacing unhealthy eating habits is difficult especially if you have embraced them for a long time. Therefore, taking small, simple steps is key towards forming healthy eating practices that last. Start eating healthy and make it a lifestyle using the above tips.
Other healthy practices to incorporate are facial relaxation and ultrasonic cavitation.
Links to Sources Used
- Americans eating healthy https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/03/487640479/75-percent-of-americans-say-they-eat-healthy-despite-evidence-to-the-contrary
- Fast food consumption statistics https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db322.htm#:~:text=In%202013%E2%80%932016%2C%2036.6%25,adults%20aged%2060%20and%20over.
