Having a solid healthy eating plan is essential to losing weight and keeping yourself feeling strong and healthy. As you know, many different diets exist – some are popular and followed by millions, whereas others are more obscure or even bordering on dangerous!
Assuming you are someone that follows a healthy and mainstream healthy eating regime, you’re likely here today because you want to find the best ways of achieving your health goals.
Take a look at the following ten tips and tricks to help you stick with and boost your healthy eating plan:
1. Create A Large Meal Plan On Your Kitchen Wall
Firstly, you should start by creating a big and obvious motivational tool to help keep you on track with your healthy eating regime. One of the best ways to do that is by turning one of your kitchen walls into a meal planner display.
You could install a board on your wall where you can easily write and erase each week’s meal plans, or you could paint the wall with chalkboard paint and create fun and very visual meal planner displays. Either option will always grab your attention.
2. Bulk-Buy Your Ingredients For The Week
Another brilliant step to dieting success is purchasing all your meal ingredients in bulk for the week. Doing so offers you several advantages.
Firstly, it means you’ve got everything you need at home to create your healthy meals. Secondly, it lowers the risk of caving into temptation and eating unhealthy snacks or foods.
Lastly, buying all your mealtime ingredients in bulk can often save you money – especially with the soaring price of specific foods due to the current conflict in Europe.
3. Stay Hydrated All The Time
Keeping hydrated, irrespective of whether it’s a hot day or not, is crucial for many different reasons. For example, drinking enough will ensure your body’s processes function as expected and can transport toxic chemicals and substances away from your vital organs.
Knowing what to drink as part of your diet also makes sense. You could consider Mediterranean diet drinks, for instance, or play it safe and stick solely to water for your hydration needs. Whatever you drink, make sure it doesn’t act as a diuretic.
4. Use Smaller Plates
Did you know that eating regular or small portions of food on large plates can fool your brain into thinking your body is still hungry? That’s because your brain tricks you into feeling unsatisfied with your food portion.
One way to combat that problem is by swapping out your large plates for small ones. Doing so will make your brain think that even small food portions look huge to your eyes due to the proportion of food against the diameter of your plates.
5. Avoid Eating Processed Food
You should remind yourself that consuming processed food, such as microwave meals, is often a bad idea even if you weren’t on a healthy eating regime.
Processed food is almost always high in salt, sugar, and fat – all the things that are unhealthy for the human body and likely to make you put on weight instead of losing it.
You might think that eating processed food is a time-saver for your busy weekly schedules. But, it won’t boost your healthy eating plan; if anything, it will jeopardize your health goals.
6. Consider Buying Organic Food
Are you aware that even supposedly fresh fruit and vegetables from grocery stores can sometimes be bad for your health? Some foods get sprayed with pesticides, and they can potentially end up getting digested by humans – despite rigorous washing.
Sticking with organic fruit and vegetables means natural food products aren’t coated in anything that could make you ill, nor do they contain chemicals designed to extend the shelf life of those items.
These days, the price of organic fruit and vegetables has come down a lot, so there isn’t much of an excuse to change your buying habits.
7. Track Your Progress With Technology
Did you know that technology can lend a helping hand to boost your efforts when sticking to a healthy eating regime? Most people use a smartphone of some description, and you can download all kinds of apps that help you track what you eat.
For example, MyFitnessPal is one of the leading health and fitness apps that allows you to set weight loss goals, input the ingredients for each meal you consume, and calculate your total calorie consumption for each day.
8. Reward Yourself With Healthy Snacks
Whether you’ve done something amazing at work or are just having a good day at home plowing through your to-do list, you might feel like rewarding yourself with a little motivational treat.
Resist the urge to eat some chocolate or something else equally unhealthy. Instead, reward yourself with a healthy snack like a banana or apple.
Doing so won’t harm your healthy eating regime, plus it’ll give you a sense of achievement, not to mention releasing some endorphins in your brain to make you feel good about yourself!
9. Take A Packed Lunch To Work
When it’s lunchtime at work, what do you do? If your usual routine involves buying some take-out food from a nearby store or consuming a meal of unhealthy items from your canteen or a vending machine, now’s the time to rethink your lunchtime strategy!
One way to eat healthier at work is by preparing some lunch at home and taking it to work with you. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a healthy sandwich or some homemade soup, it’ll be significantly healthier than your current eating regime.
10. Plan Ahead For Eating Out
Last but not least, there will come a time when you get invited for a meal somewhere. Short of saying you can’t attend or simply not eating anything at the venue, what else can you do?
One option is to eat a light, healthy snack at home before going out, and then select the healthiest and lightest meal option at the restaurant. Usually, soups, salads, or meat without the sides end up being the healthiest option.
