Do you think that it's important to eat healthy? Actually, many people realize that healthy eating habits can help support a healthy weight, manage or improve chronic diseases and maintain overall good health. But a diet that contains more processed, less nutritious foods can lead to weight gain and poor health.
If you want to develop healthy eating habits, then make small changes over a longer period. You will need to focus on eating consistent, well-balanced meals and eating a variety of foods. This will help to ensure that you're consuming enough nutrients to support your body and daily activities.
Developing healthy eating habits is a great way to improve your health and can be just a few small changes away. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind thus enabling you to be more productive at work. If you want to embark on this positive journey, below are a few tips to help you start a healthy eating diet and lifestyle. Let's dive deep into it.
Table Contents
Here what I will cover in my article:
#1. What are the 10 Ways to develop Healthy eating habits?
Proper nutrition can help you maintain a healthy weight, improve overall health, and avoid chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Think of nutrition as an anti-medicine. The 10 ways to develop healthy eating habits are:
1. Eat 5 to 6 balanced meals a day
Eating 5 to 6 balanced meals a day means eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and 2 to 3 snacks daily. Each should include a grain, a vegetable and fruit, and protein.
Build a balanced plate at every meal, as well as snacks.
2. Eat breakfast every day
Research shows that breakfast eaters generally weigh less than people who skip breakfast. A healthy breakfast provides those first critical nutrients that your body needs each day for energy and to manage stress. Eating breakfast also revitalises up your metabolism, which helps to manage your weight.
Breakfast should be a combination of lean protein, complex carbohydrate, and healthy fats containing essential fatty acids, found in the omega-3s and omega-6s. This will help you build lean muscle and stabilize insulin levels, which help maintain hormone levels and manage sugar cravings early in the day.
3. Be mindful when eating
Pay attention to when and what you eat, and tap into your behaviour and feelings around food. Eat only when you are hungry, but don't wait until you feel starving, then you will more likely overeat and choose unhealthy foods to calm your cravings.
Your New Body Daily Journal will help you to keep track of your eating habits and food triggers. While it may seem tedious to keep a food journal, doctors advised that this is a highly effective practice.
Recording what and how much you eat offers a much more accurate picture. By journaling what and when you eat and how certain foods make you feel, you will begin to notice your habits and spot trends and patterns around healthy and unhealthy eating. Seeing it on paper will help motivate you to make the necessary changes.
Be mindful of your eating environment. Changing your eating habits can be difficult, so, consider speaking to a registered dietitian to ensure that your meal plan fits with your lifestyle, preferences, goals, and health issues.
4. Hydrate
Staying hydrated can help you to maintain energy and lose weight. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between hunger and thirst. Drinking more water helps your body to stay hydrated so you know when you’re truly hungry.
But, you may be thinking that how much water should you drink? Right? Then, experts say that you shouldn’t go by the old formula of eight glasses a day.
How much water you need depends on many factors, including your height, weight, activity level, and where you live. A general guideline is to drink ½ an ounce to an ounce of water for every pound you weigh. But, make sure to avoid sugary drinks, which are a source of hidden calories.
5. Consume salt in moderation
Salt (sodium on a nutrition label), is essential for the body. But too much can raise your blood pressure, putting you at risk for heart problems. Sodium is found in most processed and packaged foods. Cutting back on packaged foods can help to reduce your sodium intake, as well as the other bad stuff in packaged foods.
6. Eat lots of fruits and veggies
Fruits and vegetables are generally low in calories but packed with vitamins and minerals. They are also full of fibre and water, which means that they will help you stay full for a long time. Try to eat at least 3 servings of fruit and 5 servings of vegetables every day and see the change.
7. Manage your metabolism
The Smart Eating Plan is all about keeping your energy up so you can build lean muscle, which will help you manage your metabolism. This becomes even more important as you age.
Eating a mini-meal every 2 to 3 hours is a smart eating strategy that will help you manage the calories while building lean muscle. This is the best way to manage your caloric expenditure – your body will burn more calories by itself just to survive. Although you want to eat 5 to 6 meals and snacks a day, don't overeat at any of the meals and be sure to choose healthy and nutrient-rich foods.
8. Start a food journal.
Before overhauling your diet and eating habits, it's a good idea to journal about where you currently are with your diet. Journaling is a great place to start because it gives you an insight into where your starting point is. It makes you realize your strengths and makes you aware of your weaknesses.
A journal can also help you to keep yourself accountable as you develop new, healthy eating habits.
9. Stop eating when you're satisfied, not full.
When you eat until you are too full or overly full, you're most likely consuming too many calories for your body's needs. This is not a healthy habit to continue as it could cause weight gain.
It may be difficult to tell when you're only "satisfied." It takes about 20 minutes for your brain and stomach to communicate that feeling. That's why it's important to eat slowly.
10. Avoid watching TV while eating
Watching TV while eating is not at all a good idea as:
1. You tend to eat more
It goes without saying that if you eat in front of the TV then you end having more than what you eat in a regular meal. This is because, your mind is distracted when you watch TV and hence, you fail to realise how much and what you are eating.
2. You might binge on junk food
Another common reason why you should not watch TV while eating is that you might choose quantity over quality, which is mostly packaged food that is loaded with calories. Also, most of the TV commercials are loaded with fast foods and packaged foods, which in turn make you opt for unhealthy food choices, further leading you to munch on unhealthy foods.
So, these are the ten ways to develop healthy eating habits. All these have personally helped me a lot. Hope that it will help you too.
#2. CONCLUSION
Whether you need to manage your portions, stop skipping breakfast, or eat food more slowly, you must embrace the good healthy decisions that you make. Habits won’t stick if you don’t commit to them. Commitment and consistency are the keys.
Try doing things that can bolster your new healthy habits. Remove unhealthy foods that might be tempting from the household. Make a point to try new, healthy foods and strive for balanced meals always.
Thanks for reading it till the end. Hope you find this blog post helpful.
If you liked it then do leave your valuable thoughts in the comments below.
