Close your eyes and think for a minute about your top health goals, maybe they include losing weight (and keeping it off this time!), breaking free from your constant sugar/carb cravings, having more energy, sleeping better at night, putting an end to digestive discomforts, feeling better despite some health conditions (thyroid, adrenal, IBS…), etc.
Now think about the #1 thing you could do to get yourself closer to achieving your goals.
I bet nearly every single one of you thought: eat more nutritious, “healthier” foods.
Seems obvious and easy, right?
I thought the same thing when I was trying to reach my goals a few years back – which included losing weight, overcoming some serious stomach bloating issues, and having more energy/better focus.
But I wasn’t doing it.
To be honest, trading in some of the processed junk and diet foods I ate and eating more vegetables was hard, it was more time consuming, I didn’t really know where to start or how to do it, and most of all it didn’t taste as good. I was a busy girl, I didn’t have time for researching and planning and prepping. I thought: I love food, life’s too short not to eat the foods I want and have to eat salads all day every day!
Plus when I did try to eat healthy so I’d look and feel better, I put SO many rules on myself about what to eat and what not to eat I turned into a ticking time bomb and it was a matter of days before I broke down and binged/fell off the wagon. Yes that approach did work sometimes in the short term, but was 100% not sustainable or enjoyable.
So what’s a girl to do?
There’s a million quick fix solutions out there, different magic pills and powders that promise to help me lose weight, or give me supermega energy, or a flat bloat-free belly in 5 days or less. YES those sounded super tempting. I even tried a bunch of them, but just like the diets I tried, they didn’t work long term. Womp womp.
Hippocrates had it right when he said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Everything we eat is either fighting disease, or fueling it.
Clearly diets and quick fixes aren’t the right way to go about adopting a healthier way of eating. So here are some ideas on how to fall in love with and actually want to eat healthy food – to then ultimately look and feel better!
Try picking 1 of these at a time and tackling it:
Work on your mindset.
A big part of what I realized I needed to change in order to reach my goals and change my actions to set myself up for success was my mindset. We all have a circumstance that we’re in right now. We have thoughts about that very circumstance, which generate feelings about it. Those thoughts and feelings drive us to action, which gives us our result.
My thoughts about my circumstance were that I didn’t have time, I didn’t know where to start, it was going to be hard. Because of that, I felt overwhelmed and that I couldn’t do it and should just find a quick/easy shortcut around doing it the right way. That lead to my actions of trying diets and magic pills and powders, and my results of staying the same. Still not looking and feeling like the best version of myself.
Instead, I worked on changing that: making my goals a priority and treating them that way, plus educating myself about what I was putting on and in my body. Those things were a major catalyst in changing my thoughts and feelings, which ultimately changed my actions and results. I truly WANTED to eat healthy, nutritious foods. I wanted to because I wanted to look and feel better more than I wanted to eat pizza for dinner every night – feel free to fill in whatever one of your vices is there!
By taking the time to work through my mindset, it changed everything else for me (and my clients)! I know it will do the same for you.
Start with what you already like.
I bet when you think about it, there are some healthy foods that you already like. You actually probably like more healthy foods than you think! These foods can be vegetables, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, certain nuts/seeds, etc. Start by making a list…what are those healthy foods you like?
My love for veggies and mostly all things healthy didn’t happen all at once. It started out with only eating a couple different healthy things, like carrots and bell peppers, some brown rice here and there, almonds too. So at night when I was watching TV, I’d cut myself up some carrots and bell peppers and munch on them while I zoned out to my favorite shows. It was a start!
Take that list you made and start eating those foods more often, find ways to add more of them into each day.
Ditch the “All or Nothing” thinking.
Love pizza? How about fried chicken tenders? Typical restrictive diets will tell you that you should not eat those foods to be considered healthy. But that isn’t true. A healthy diet does not mean a perfect diet. A healthy diet is one that helps you to reach your health goals (that is of course if your health goals are similar to what I outlined above!). Let me assure you that you do not need to eat super nutritious foods ALL the time in order to do things like lose weight, get more energy, or put an end to your stomach discomforts.
That’s not realistic in everyday life.
Having the occasional food or meal that isn’t in line with reaching your health goals is sometimes considered a “cheat meal.” I don’t like the psychology associated with that. It’s implying that you’re being dishonest with your intentions. Instead, when you want to eat things like that, accept them for what they are, and move on! Don’t let them interrupt your healthy eating flow, or give you feelings of guilt or remorse.
There’s nothing to feel guilty about. You know no, they probably don’t align exactly with your goals, but that’s ok! You’ll still get there with the occasional indulgences.
Focus on nourishment, not numbers.
As a society, we are becoming more obsessed with nutrition but less and less happy and healthy. How can this be? Back in the day, how did we survive without knowing our basal metabolic rates or how many grams of protein we needed or exactly how many calories and grams of fat were in that meal we just ate?
“How,” of course, is intuition. By eating a variety of foods that appeal to our taste buds and make us feel well-nourished and satisfied.
Instead of focusing on numbers, like calories and macros, focus on eating all different types of foods and getting all different types of nutrients. With each meal, try to find on your plate some protein, some fats, and some fiber. No need to count, but make sure all things are there. Then, place more emphasis on the way that you feel before, during, and after eating. You’ll enjoy meals way more, you’ll recognize feeling fuller, with more energy and better focus when eating this type of variety, and also get the nutrition that you need too.
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Maximize flavor.
I think way too many people think of “healthy food” as being bland, tasteless, and boring. Usually these people are also equating “healthy food” with something like a plain chicken breast, steamed broccoli, and plain brown rice.
It does not have to be that way!!
Whole foods are flavorful, delicious, and incredibly satisfying – sometimes you just need to learn how to put them together. So, get excited about cooking. Try a new recipe. Take a cooking class. Use fresh herbs, seasonal produce, olive oil, and other flavorful ingredients. Eat a variety of colors and textures. There are so many possibilities to choose from you’re bound to find some you do like.
Healthy eating is anything but boring. If you’re not loving whole foods, you’re not doing it right. 🙂
Tweak your favorite recipes.
Sneaking vegetables you ‘kind of like’ or that have a more mild taste into your favorite dishes is a great way to get those important nutrients. Just chop them up really small and add them into the food. Some ways to do this are to add zucchini or baby spinach to lasagna, throw in some mushrooms or tomatoes into your scrambled eggs, sneak cooked carrots and onions into pasta sauce, add onions and peppers to pizza, or make a chili, soup, or shepherd’s pie and put lots of veggies in there (chopped small).
Skewers are a great way to get delicious caramelized veggies plus meat proteins (things like onions, tomatoes, peppers are great). Make a smoothie for breakfast and add some baby spinach, or a couple stalks of celery, or a half of a cucumber and you won’t even know it’s in there! Or try vegetable noodles instead of pasta.
One of my favorite posts to date is about healthy swaps. Healthy food swaps are one of the best things I started doing when I began my new healthier food-based lifestyle. Start small, pick 1 or 2 to start with, and when you feel comfortable with those add another 1 or 2.
