Eating healthy can be difficult, especially in countries like the United States where food can have so many unnecessary and unhealthy additives that it’s almost impossible not to keep gaining weight. If you find this has been the case, then it’s time to take a radical approach towards your food.
You owe it to yourself to make a few simple, but effective changes to your diet. With the right approach you can truly get more nutritional value out of your meals, all while putting less effort in on a daily basis. It won’t be easy, and you will need to find new sources from farmer’s markets to options like Asian grocery stores to find the ingredients you need, but overall your health and your body, will thank you:
From prepping healthy meals, to using a digestive enzyme to help you get more nutritional value out of your diet, these are the top tips to help you eat healthier and feel better in 2023:
Remove Unhealthy Foods From Your Pantry
It can be hard to keep up with healthy habits when you have unhealthy snacks and temptations sitting right there. These items aren’t even tastier than what you can make either, they’re just fast and full of addictive substances like sugars and fats, so your brain craves them.
If you want to give yourself the biggest chance at successfully breaking bad habits and starting new ones, you need to remove that temptation. Go through and give your pantry and fridge a good clear out (and deep clean, while you’re at it).
Start Meal Prepping
The best way to eat well while simultaneously not adding an exhaustive amount of effort to your cooking every day is to meal prep. You can do this in a few ways. While yes, you can create a large volume of food to then be portioned out in Tupperware for the week, this is one of the least inspired ways to approach your meal prep.
Instead of doing that, consider ways you can prep ingredients now so that they’re faster to cook with on the day. This can be something as simple as cutting and freezing your vegetables yourself. It could also mean buying marinating your chicken so that it’s packed with flavor when it is time to cook it.
By marinating, for example, you can add that punch of flavor instead of using calorie-heavy and nutrient-light sauces.
When it does come time to actually cook, yes, make more than you eat in one sitting and put the rest immediately away for leftovers.
One area where meal prep is really handy is with sauces and other flavor-boosting items. You can roast vegetables in the oven, for example, and then blend that together with some spices to create a rich, delicious sauce you can use over the next few days. You can even freeze this sauce so that it lasts longer.
When To Use Supplements & Boosters
You should aim to get the full range of vitamins and nutrients from the food that you eat. If you’re worried that you aren’t getting all the nutrients necessary, then you can and should use supplements and boosters.
There are a few different ways to approach this. One of the best is to use food supplements. If you make a sauce, for example, you can add additional supplements from nutritional yeast to egg to ramp up the content and value of the sauce itself. There are many superfood supplements you can do this with, many of which are powders which makes adding it to any sauce-based meal a simple step.
You can also use vitamin supplements in the form of pills, chewable gummies, or even mints. A digestive enzyme mint can help your body digest food more effectively so you get more out of your meals while minimizing gas and that bloated feeling you may get after eating.
Using these supplements or boosters can help you get a rounded diet, especially if you’re a restrictive eater. They aren’t perfect, of course. At the end of the day real food remains the best source of nutrients and vitamins. If your diet, even improved, doesn’t offer you everything that you need, however, then using supplements and boosters is a great way to reach your health goals.
Rethink Where You Shop
If you’ve struggled with your weight, and find that grocery stores near you have just let you down again and again, then know there’s a good chance it’s the food itself. Instead of shopping at large chain grocery stores, consider shopping at organic grocers, farmer’s markets, and even Asian supermarkets. All of these are home to food options that typically have less preservatives and unnecessary calorie-adding additives.
Avoid Heavy Processed Ingredients
Another secret source of high calories that may be one of the main sources of weight gain is sauces. Make your own sauces, and you can get more nutritional value out of your mixtures while also consuming less calories. Just remember to keep your sauces as healthy as possible. Rather than use sugar to sweeten a sauce, for example, you can caramelize onions to release the natural sweetness within.
You’ll also want to switch out the fats you consume. While olive oil isn’t perfect, it offers a lot more in terms of benefits over other types of oil, particularly corn oil.
Don’t think that staples like pasta are in the clear, either. Pasta and other items that are heavy on starch can be another key culprit for weight gain. This doesn’t mean you need to stop eating pasta but look at what is in it. You can likely buy freshly made pasta or dried pasta from a small supplier that is healthier overall than the big-store brands currently offer.
Focus On Nutrition, Not Just Calories
When it comes to feeling well, nutrition comes out on top, always. If you want to lose weight try to instead source healthier ingredients and keep checking in with yourself as you eat to see if you’re full. If you’re starting to feel full, stop. You can finish your meal later if you want, but taking that break can be instrumental to listening to your body and maintaining a healthy weight. Using that tip, and buying healthier ingredients, should help you make headway. Other than that, however, nutritional content is far more important, so consider that when making big meal changes.
