Eating healthy may not feel like the easiest thing to achieve these days. With your busy schedule cooking healthy meals can feel just too tiring.
As I mentioned in last week’s article, my word for 2016 is FOCUS. So, I am implementing it in all areas of my life including Clean Eating.
So often eating clean can feel like a lot of work there are so many distractions and easy less healthy options. Our schedules and environment don’t support our healthy eating habits. This is why we need FOCUS in making it easier for ourselves.
I’ve learned the best thing is to prepare ahead of time. Assess what you have, what you need and which nights you can cook and which nights you need quick healthy easy meals.
I’m not going to pretend I always get this right but when I do take the time to prepare and keep it simple, I achieve my goals and I feel better and have more energy because I am eating right!
So to start eating healthy begin tweaking and refining what you are eating on a weekly basis. Choose some easy meals that you can prepare daily that will ensure you are getting at least 1-2 portions of the really good stuff! Like smoothies. That’s what I do. I start the day with a smoothie filled with greens. Then I can go about my day knowing I have had at least 1-2 servings of veggies before I walked out the door! This works for me… is that right for you… try it?
If your goal is to eat better, consider the following tips by trying out one or two of these suggestions and assessing what works for you.
- Make a Pinterest board with your favorite recipes. Make the Pinterest app work for you by storing quick, healthy and easy recipes. Plus, when you forget your shopping list at home (I’ve done this many of times 😉 You can open your app and quickly see what you need. I breakdown my boards by dinner, desserts, side dishes and slow cooker recipes. All my boards consist of gluten, dairy and sugar free recipes. Click here to check out my boards. One thing I do to maintain these boards is to eliminate the recipes I didn’t care for and keep those I did.
- Another option is to create a recipe board in your kitchen. I have to say while I use Pinterest for my recipes it’s annoying when you are trying to follow the recipe on your phone as the screen shuts off, so when I can I prefer to print out the recipe and hang it on the recipe board as I cook. Once I’m done and determined if I will cook this recipe again I either add it to my recipe binder or throw it out. I also keep any recipes I find in magazines and post them here and this helps for fresh new ideas. Another tip, I keep this tip sheet on food substitutions posted here, so often you are cooking and are out of an ingredients and here you can refer quickly to the tip sheet.
- Each week commit to preparing two healthy dishes. I love my crockpot, especially in the winter for making healthy soups. Prepare a big batch of soup at the beginning of the week and have it a couple of times that week. My favorite nights are coming home knowing all I have to do is warm up the soup I made with minimal dish cleaning. If you’re not using a crockpot I highly recommend it and you can even make desserts with it! 😉
- Bake a healthy dessert. Making a healthy dessert feels more exciting than trying to deprive yourself with no dessert. We all know what happens when we deprive ourselves we end up snacking junk food! A healthy dessert doesn’t necessarily mean eating just fruit or something gluten free. For example, I love drinking hot chocolate but most brands have sugar and dairy, so I created a version with almond milk, cocoa powder, cinnamon, vanilla extract and Stevia, this is what I enjoy as my dessert during the cold months. As I said, recipes can always be tweaked with healthier alternative ingredients.
I hope these 4 suggestions spark some new ways for you to get FOCUS-ed on your clean eating in 2016. Pick one this week to try, see if it works for you and keep it up. Maybe you can layer in 1-2 of the suggestions as you go. It is all about setting a new foundation and new habits. You can do it!
Now I want to hear from you, would you like more tips on how to eat healthy, find healthy alternatives or learning how to entertain with healthy meals.Comment below and share with me what tips you would like to hear about.
xo,
