If you’re making changes right now to start eating healthier, feeling better about yourself, and moving your body more than congratulations. At this time of year, most people tend to indulge and they pretend that calories don’t exist because Christmas and the New Year are a time for family, friends and parties. We’re celebrating the end of a very long year and we want to feel good about ourselves with our friends.
So we let our hair down, we let our inhibitions go and we eat and drink until we are merry and bright. That’s just the way the season goes, however. Indulgent food should be enjoyed and savoured, but it shouldn’t be something you do as a binge or as an excuse to have fun. If you have to turn to food to have fun, then there’s something more in depth going on here than just a penchant for good food.
You can make healthy food a priority in your life, and you can allow it to bring you as much joy as the junk food you buy from your local takeout joint. You can swap over to weight loss injections that will help you to quit the food noise and make you feel like you’re more in yourself than ever before.
The question is whether or not you are willing to do it.Learning to love how healthy food makes you feel.Is going to make you feel good on the inside and the outside, and you’ll feel so much more confident going into the new year that you can finally find some balance. With that in mind, here are our 10 tips for healthier habit development.
- Stop skipping breakfast. Coffee is not a breakfast. Tea is not a breakfast. A cigarette outside in your pajamas? That’s also not breakfast. You need to get up in the morning, have your glass of water and wake up and then settle down to something delicious to eat. Breakfast on the go, such as a McDonald’s, is probably not a good option either, but you need to think of something that’s going to make you feel satisfied. A nutritious breakfast sets you up with energy for the whole day and it can really help you to hit your five a day as well. Overnight oats, baked oats, eggs, and bacon, all of these things can help you to start your day right.
- Bring some balance to your diet. It’s important that you choose things from all 5 food groups for every meal. You should be eating a wide range of vegetables, fruit, lean meats, proteins, pulses, whole grains, and naturally lower fat dairy foods across each week. When you’re creating your shopping list to go and buy groceries, writing down a menu of items that you could eat day-to-day can help you to classify where your foods are headed. If you’re just grabbing a sandwich from Subway or you’re heading out to your local fast food joint at lunchtime for convenience’s sake, it’s time to stop being lazy and it’s time to embrace change.
- Be mindful of your calories. To lose weight, you need to have less calories consumed each day. Your calories come from food that provides your body with minerals, vitamins, proteins, fibers and healthy fats. Nutritious calories also give you energy and they make you feel fuller for longer. Yes, you could probably save calories and have a chocolate bar later, but if you could save your calories for some fruit salad and some low fat cream, that’s still just as delicious.
- Make sure that you’re eating the rainbow. One of the best ways to have healthier living is to eat as much fruit and veg as you like. Different coloured fruits and vegetables contain different nutrients for your body, and if you want to stay healthy, you need to eat your fruit and veg rather than just drink them for the full benefits.
- Drink more water. With your water intake, 6 to 8 glasses of water every day is a recommended amount because that’s what our human bodies require for us to survive. Water, low fat milk, tea, and coffee all count towards your fluid intake. However, you shouldn’t just have coffee, and you shouldn’t just have tea. For every drink you have, have a glass of plain water with you. This can help you to stay hydrated.
- Learn to cook. One of the most important life skills you could have is to learn to cook, and a great way to understand what goes into the food that you eat is to actually stand there and cook the recipes from the book or from the Internet. Recipe inspiration and ideas are everywhere you look, so you don’t have to sit there and wonder about what to eat every week.
- Read the small print. It’s the saturated fat that can be a killer. So you need to make sure that you’re checking the food that you’re buying so that it’s not too processed. There is a place for processed food in your diet, but it doesn’t have to be in every single meal that you eat.
- Stop calling sweet foods treats. One of the most important healthy habits that you can mark is the psychological ones. Calling a sweet food a treat implies that you are a dog or an animal who deserves to be treated just for existing. Building sweet foods and junk foods into your everyday diet or every week diet allows you to have something small that.You on track but also doesn’t banish any food. Food does not hold a moral value and if you call them good or bad you’re going to give it a moral value. There is no such thing as good food or bad food. The poison itself is in the portion you eat. One chocolate bar is not going to derail your progress. An entire pack of chocolate bars is going to make you feel sick.
- Get up and move. Staying active is so important for your overall health, so you should get at least 30 minutes a day of moderate physical activity. Play with the kids at the park or go for a walk with your headphones in and the dog in the evening.
- Get a good night’s sleep. A good quality sleep can really affect how well you’re able to grow, learn and perform in your life. When you sleep, your body has time to repair and rejuvenate.
