How to Eat for your Health Without Going Hungry

For a lot of people eating healthy and making good food choices can seem like a daunting task.  With so many different diets and studies, it can make eating healthy seemingly impossible. Eating with your health in mind shouldn’t be only for the privileged or those with all the time in the world.  From grocery shopping to eating out, this guide will give you helpful tips and tricks to make healthy living attainable and realistic.

What is a Healthy Diet?

Everyone’s definition of healthy is going to be different but the one this that will make or break the idea of eating healthy is ultimately how sustainable the diet is for you.  It’s probably not sustainable to say you will only eat chicken and vegetables and it's also unsustainable to believe that you will never have another treat food again. The biggest step in creating a healthy diet is to set reasonable guidelines.  Here are some examples:

• Only eating out once per week

• Having a meatless Monday

• Eating at least one serving of vegetables with all your meals

• Reducing sugar and added sweeteners

• Eliminate dairy or other food intolerances

• Drink more water

• Stop drinking pop

By outlining some of the big goals you have with your diet it helps to make healthy eating seem more reasonable.  Once you’ve planned out some guidelines you would like your new lifestyle to include, it is time to go shopping!

Tips for Grocery Shopping

Making a grocery list and sticking to it can be one of the easiest ways to avoid junk food. When we make a list, we force ourselves to only buy the essentials no extras.

Although grocery shopping may seem like a really good idea when you’re hungry it’s actually not.  When grocery shopping on a full belly you are less likely to buy junk food and it is a lot easier to just stick with your shopping list.  

A good tip to help avoid overly processed food is to avoid the middle section of the grocery store almost completely.  It is a lot easier to make healthy choices when you’re not drooling over the chips or candy that you know you shouldn’t even think about putting in your shopping cart.  

Tips for Going Out

Once eating healthy at home has become a habit, eating out can be either your worst nightmare or your best friend.  All the various different options may make you just about lose it. Maybe you just wish you could order it all or maybe you feel guilty even for looking.  Whatever the case may be, eating out and making healthy choices can leave you feeling satisfied without regrets. You just need to learn how to make the best choices for you.  

It would be easy for me to say that ordering a salad is the best choice but its really not.  If you don’t want to eat a salad but still want to know how to eat with your health in mind, keep reading for some of my favorite tips.  

• Don’t feel like you need to eat all the food on your plate.  Unless you're sitting down for dinner at a fancy restaurant where the portions are all too small, the size of your meal might be too big to eat comfortably.  It's even recommended to split the meal into two portions when you first get it.

• Don’t feel guilty about ordering “not the healthiest” meal on the menu.  It feels good to order food that you want to order not that you feel that you HAVE to order.  Going out does not mean that you should feel bad about eating food that is exciting or that you want to order.  

Tips to Maintain

Sometimes the hardest part about starting a new habit is not so much all in just getting started.  Having the ability to maintain a healthy diet can sometimes be challenging. It can be easy to fall back into old habits but the most important thing is acknowledging when this happens and trying again.  It is not the end of the world to have a piece of cake or some of your favorite treats, it’s just important that a healthy relationship is developed with these. Nobody will ever eat perfectly healthy because everyone’s definition of healthy is different.  Once you know what that is for you then you can begin to focus on how exactly you will work to maintain that.

Although everyone’s idea of healthy can be different, it is still important to find a balance in how we eat.  Eating junk food and treats all the time is not a sustainable practice but neither is eating only “healthy” food.  Healthy eating can be implemented into our lives relatively easily, we just have to know what our goals. Once outlined we can start working towards our idea of healthy.