If you’re like millions of Americans, you’ve probably made a conscious decision to eat healthier at least once. From the mediterranean to low-carb to keto to paleo, you may have tried at least one type of diet in your lifetime.
But most would agree that when you hear the word diet, you don’t feel warm and fuzzy inside. It has a restricting connotation that may in fact send shivers! Healthy eating, however, can soothe your heart…
Literally and figuratively.
Here are 7 tips to love healthy eating and stay the course!
Tip #1: Make your plate a colorful work of art.
Does anyone remember the show Everyday Italian? I loved this show and learned so much from amazing chef Giada de Laurentiis. Her Italian meals looked so delicious that I wanted to pull them off the screen and onto my plate. I’ll never forget her words: “The better it looks, the better it’s going to taste in your mouth!” This is typically true—if something looks scrumptious, it probably is.
When you plan your meals, try to incorporate colors from healthy foods. Beets have a beautiful purple color; spinach is a vibrant green; tomatoes are bright red. Balance your plate with fruits and veggies so that healthy eating is fun.
Tip #2: Dare to be adventurous and try new recipes!
If you eat a salad for dinner every day, it’s going to get boring. I don’t care how awesome that salad is—variety truly is the spice of life! Keep healthy staple meals, but make it a goal to try one new recipe each week (or every other week). Your next “favorite meal” is waiting to be discovered, but you will never know if staple meals are the only meals you eat.
Using a recipe app can help you with ideas for new meals. You can often search with keywords so that perhaps a food you have a taste for is part of your new recipe to try!
Another great idea—and perhaps an even better one—is to ask your friends and family who love to cook healthy for ideas! I’ve gotten so many ideas from my dear friend, Lisa, who has made healthy eating a way of life for as long as I can remember.
Tip #3: Keep healthy eating simple.
I don’t recommend recipes with 10,000 ingredients that you have to find from four different stores. I’m exaggerating, but you know what I mean! We’ve all seen those recipes with 20ish items. And there are five exotic items that cannot be found in one store. I’m busy, which is an understatement. I will not bother to make tough recipes for my everyday-toddler-mom-fitness-instructor-writer-editor-graphic designer life. To use my “best” grammar, “ain’t nobody got time for that!”
Look for recipes with 10 items or less, and preferably ones that take no more than an hour and a half (unless you are crock-potting) to make. Often the simplest recipes—like ground turkey tacos garnished with pico de gallo, lettuce, sour cream, and a hint of cheddar, for example, are the most delicious meals on earth! One-pot meals are awesome too. If a recipe is simple, healthy, and delicious, you are more likely to make the dish again.
Tip #4: Create a healthier version of less-healthy meals.
Consider the air fryer and convection oven your best friends for this tip! And consider the deep fryer your enemy. Instead of frying, I make Jamaican beef patties in a convection oven. They come out so yummy AND it is much easier without frying and cleaning up an oily pan (confession: I don’t like doing dishes, especially ones that are harder to clean!).
Maybe you love spaghetti and meatballs. Try turkey meatballs or chicken meatballs! For the pasta, there are endless nutritious and delicious possibilities. Two of my favorites are Banza pasta (made from chickpeas) and whole wheat pasta. To go even lighter, you can make “zoodles” with a tool that cuts carrots and zucchini to look like noodles!
Now I know that some recipes simply need the fat and the sugar for an authentic taste. I’m not saying to put two teaspoons of sugar in a batch of cookies, but minor adjustments—a quarter cup less of sugar in a recipe, a little less salt, using plant-based milk instead of whole milk—can make a difference. These small tweaks add up at the end of the day, and the math is in favor of a healthier you.
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Tip #5: Become a student of healthy eating.
When we understand why, we are more likely to say yes. If I know that I need to eat more green veggies “because they’re healthy,” that may not be enough motivation to buy them. But, if I know that spinach is (1) high in Vitamin A for better vision (2) high in fiber for better digestion and (3) high in antioxidants that defend against cancer, then guess what? Spinach is going on my shopping list ASAP.
Learning is fun. And not only do you learn for you, but you also learn for your family and teach them what you learn. For some, you may even break a cycle of unhealthy eating and set the stage of healthy eating for generations to come.
The best students are those who teach what they learn.
Tip #6: Try meal prepping.
Now when I say meal prep, I am talking about two different ways. One way is to prepare a meal and divide it into individual meal containers. This form of meal prepping is wonderful because it allows you to (1) easily control portion size and (2) have a meal ready to eat straight from the fridge. This form of meal prep works very well for singles, smaller families, or those with families who need a different meal plan than the one you need to meet your specific health needs.
Another way of meal prepping is to knock out the “harder prep work” for one week of meals. Let’s go back to tacos and spaghetti for an example. If you are planning on both meals that week, you would season and cook half of your ground turkey for tacos, and the other half you would shape and cook as meatballs. If you are making salads, you could cut up different veggies, put them in containers, and then pull different ones to made different salads throughout the week. And if you like smoothies, you would cut up (and maybe freeze) fruits so that healthy smoothies are easier to make. This form of meal prep works extremely well for bigger families because it (1) easily provides variety (2) is more cost-effective and (3) caters to a variety of tastes. Think about prepping the time-consuming parts of a meal at the start of the week. That way, you simply do the easy stuff (e.g., boiling pasta for 10 minutes, simmering a sauce for 15 minutes) when it’s time to make the delicious meal!
Tip #7: Approach healthy eating with an attitude of love.
In life, the battle is often half-mental. Tell yourself that you love healthy eating. When you eat healthy, make a list of the ways it helped you: better focus, more energy, reduced inflammation and bloating—the list could go on and on, truly! Avoid the loveless word “diet” and replace with phrases like nutrition plan, better me blueprint, or lighter eating.
Just as you can grow to love a person, you can grow to love healthy eating. You grow old loving your spouse; a love for healthy eating can help you live long enough to grow old. I promise you this: the effort that you make for a healthier relationship with food will last a lifetime.
If you are interested in done-for-you meal prep, reach out to the author of this post. She is passionate about healthy eating and here help all who are interested with delicious and nutritious meals!
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