In just a few short days, this decade will be complete. It will be time to start afresh in 2020 with a new year, a new decade, and a new lifestyle.
Many folks will set a New Year’s Resolution to start eating healthy. And for the first few weeks, they’ll try to implement all the tips they’ve heard regarding nutrition for beginners. But a few weeks in, their enthusiasm will begin to wane. Unhealthy foods beckon at them, and they slowly begin to lose their willpower and resolve to continue on with their notion of healthy eating.
But next year, they’ll again create that resolution, and again try to start eating healthy, and again fail. It’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to escape.
If you start to think that eating healthy is expensive… just wait till you see the medical bills from eating cheap, crappy food.
If you’ve ever found yourself in that kind of situation, then you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll explore different ways that you can start eating healthy. We’ll show you how to eat better and give you strategies you can start employing to ensure that you stay with the habit of eating healthy food in the long-term and don’t fizzle out a couple of months in.
Why to Start Eating Healthy?
Nutrition for beginners isn’t hard—there’s so much information out there in the interwebs that you’ll have everything laid out for you that you need. The only hard part is remaining consistent in your pursuit of healthier eating and a healthier lifestyle. So the question of how to start eating healthy still remains, I hope that this article shall make you understand how to start eating healthy for the beginners and also for the people who have already been through this and are now asking how to start healthy nutrition again.
Ditch the Fast Food
Anyone who’s made the successful transition from unhealthy eating to healthy eating will tell you that fast food is probably the #1 killer.
But it’s so easy! It’s just so convenient!
I know what you’re thinking. I get that it’s infinitely easier to grab something off the McDonald’s breakfast menu in the mornings on your way to work than it is to wake up another half hour earlier to prepare yourself something healthy. But in the long run, it’s a health-killer.
Remember that most things worth doing in life aren’t easy. So ditch the fast food and wake up earlier to make a more healthy breakfast. Simply by prioritizing more time to prepare healthy food, you’ll end up eating out less because you have good food waiting for you at home. You would question yourself, why to start eating healthy when I can eat the luscious fried food with less to almost no efforts. Well because you would not want to get unhealthy and would certainly not want your heart to give up at a very young age.
Say Goodbye to Sugar and Hell0 to Healthy Eating
It should be no shock to you that sugar is bad for you and your health. Sugar-sweetened beverages contains fructose, a type of simple sugar that increases hunger and the need for food, it is due to, fructose that causes resistance to leptin which is an essential hormone that regulates hunger and tells your body to stop eating.
Sugar has been linked to many diseases and body issues like diabetes, increases skin aging, risk of cancer and other diseases. Added sugar simply increases the calories with no nutritional value for the sake of taste. So use any healthy alternate of sugar and you would be good to go.
Eat a Healthy Diet, and Stick with It
Nutrition for beginners is made simple by utilizing a pre-made diet that successful health scientists and nutritionists have already researched for you. By picking one of the many diets out there, you’ll have a concrete game plan on how to eat healthy day by day and meal by meal.
The most important thing to the success of a diet is consistency. Three weeks in, you can’t get tired of it and decide that you’re going to switch to something else that looks a little more snazzy and has a few more Instagram influencers recommending it. Whatever you decide to go with, you have to stick with for a few months if you want to see actual results.
By diet-hopping from one to the next, you’re only working to kill any of the potential gains that you would have otherwise seen materialize in your quest for a healthy lifestyle.
Don’t Do This Alone
The best way to stay consistent with your diet is to stop trying to do it alone. This year, instead of making a New Year’s resolution around healthy eating for yourself, make one with a buddy or a few other people as a team. Don’t try to do healthy eating alone because it’s just too hard to slip and fall back into old habits.
By doing it along with other people, you’ll be holding yourself accountable to them. They can check up on you to make sure that you’re on track with your nutrition goals, and you can do the same for them. As an added plus, you can also talk about what diets and healthy food preparations have been working for you.
Seek out a fitness group, a business like HealthyYou Vending, or some kind of health-oriented community. Remember, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, so those people should be those that live a healthy lifestyle!
Limit Your Eat-Out Budget by Setting Spending Thresholds
The best way to limit your unhealthy eating is by limiting your eat-out budget. If you don’t already have a personal budget, that in itself is another problem. Nothing will help you organize your finances and get your personal bookkeeping together like a personal budget.
That aside, if you have a budget already, start reducing the amount that you allocate to eating out. This will ensure that you spend more money on the food that you buy to eat in, allowing you to eat more quality foods at better prices that support your healthy lifestyle.
If you need to, look into purchasing software that will set spending thresholds on your bank account. That kind of software will provide the next level of accountability that you need to live a healthy lifestyle.
Focus on Higher Quality, Lower Quantity
Eating healthy is all about quality, not quantity. Don’t buy the cheapest meats and fruits and vegetables from Walmart. You’ll pay for it in the long run with health issues.
Instead, spend a little more money now to buy better quality food. Buy organic meat and veggies and focus on products that have very little processing. Not only will these foods have better macronutrients, but they’ll also have less exposure to harmful hormones and GMO’s.
Use Supplements and Multivitamins
One part of healthy eating is ensuring that you get all of your micronutrients as well. Too often, people tend to focus far too much on macronutrients (protein, fats, and carbohydrates), forgetting all about the vitamins that your body needs to be operating at peak performance.
Start eating a multivitamin every day. Consult your doctor if you believe you need any other supplements in order to achieve a healthy lifestyle.
Healthy Eating and Exercising Goes Hand in Hand
Simply dieting and controlling your hunger will not make you healthy, yeah sure it will make you healthier than before but it will not make you completely healthy. For that, you need your body to do exercise. Start eating healthy and working out, wake up half an hour early than you used to and warm up your body for the day.
DO NOT JOIN THE GYM AT THE FIRST INSTANCE! In current times everyone thinks to join the gym as soon as they are told to start exercising, but it is not a great of an idea as it may seem. Surely the gym will help you in your quest of healthy eating and exercising but you should first give yourself time to adjust to the new routine of life, don’t invest money in the gym in the starting instead of that you should workout at home or at the park to get into the habit. Then if you are sure about yourself that you will not ditch the gym due to laziness and or any other reason, go for membership in the gym.
By giving up some bad food habits and getting into the discipline of eating healthy and exercising you will feel good from the inside and will obviously be healthy from the outside.
We’re rooting for you!
For more lifestyle advice, be sure to check out the rest of the articles on the website!
