If you don’t eat healthily, then you’re going to run into a lot of barriers. The food we put in our bodies will fuel us and help us achieve our health & fitness goals. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, build muscle, or just improve your all-around wellness, you need to follow a healthy diet.
The issue is that we’ve been made to believe that eating healthily is incredibly difficult. So many foods are claimed to be off limits, and there are loads of diets out there that claim to be the one true healthy diet. In reality, healthy eating is simple – all you have to do is follow these golden rules:
Control your portions
You’ll find it so much easier to eat healthily when you control your portion sizes. A healthy-looking meal can become unhealthy if the portion is too large, meaning you consuming way too many calories, fats, and so on.
A good idea is to start weighing out ingredients when making your food, then referring to the nutritional information on the packaging. It will surprise you how many foods you can enjoy when you practice portion control. Things like cheese are seen as unhealthy because they contain a lot of fat. But, dentists will say cheese is good for your oral health, and nutritionists point towards a high protein count too. The key is to eat it moderation by controlling your portions, so you see the benefits without any negatives. The same applies to every food out there as well!
Cook your own meals
If you can cook your meals from scratch, then you have way more control over what goes into them. For example, using a pasta sauce out of a jar can be drastically less healthy than cooking your own. You control how much salt is in there, you control all the ingredients – there’s less for you to worry about.
So, start cooking meals using fresh ingredients as often as you can. I know, this can be tough, but you could start cooking food in bulk to help out. Devote a few hours on the weekend to cooking a few meals, and you end up with enough to last a couple of weeks. Stick your meals into freezable containers, and you have healthy microwave meals waiting for you!
Don’t restrict yourself too much
The biggest mistake you can make is restricting your diet far too much. You cut out everything sweet from your diet, which will only do one thing; create cravings.
If you actively make a decision to not eat chocolate or something you love, then you start to crave it more and more. This makes you hate your diet as you feel like it’s stopping you from eating what you want! Instead, give yourself treats now and then, just be careful. You’ll satisfy your cravings, making it far easier to stick to an overall healthier diet than before.
There’s no need to follow some crazy strict diet if you want to be healthy. Follow these rules, and you’ll be able to eat well with ease.
