3 Tiny Changes to Cultivate Healthy Eating Habits
Most of us can distinguish between healthy and unhealthy foods, that’s not the problem. The challenge with cultivating healthy eating habits is staying consistent, and this gets extra hard when you’re tired, hungry, short on time, or stressed. But there are tiny shifts you can make that really do make a huge difference, save you money, and help you reach your health goals faster.
1. Use Smaller Plates
Studies show that we eat less when we use a smaller plate or bowl. The theory is that since our plate looks full, our eyes get tricked into thinking we’re actually eating a bigger portion. The result: we’re satisfied with less food. Try eating your meals on salad plates instead of larger dinner plates—you can still eat everything you normally would, but in a smaller portion.
2. Cook Double (or Triple!) Portions
Set aside approximately an hour each week to cook a double or triple-size portion of an easy, healthy dish. Freeze the extras and use them on a night when you’re too tired to cook from scratch or eat them later in the week for lunch or dinner. It’s true that a lack of time and energy can easily sabotage your best intentions and lead you to turn to convenience foods. The problem: apart from being more expensive, you can't control portion sizes or ingredients like fat, sugar, and salt and honestly, almost anything you make at home is going to be healthier than something you eat out.
3. Drink Water & Drop the Pop
With this tip, it’s very simple: skip the pop and ask for the water. The average American is drinking about 45 gallons of soda every year. In total that’s 375 pounds of pop that pass through your system in 365 days! Start drinking water like it’s going out of fashion—enough water (ideally 8 eight-ounce glasses per day) will help your body hydrate, detox, and lead to more energy, better skin, and even weight loss.
So there you have it! It’s not just making poor choices with food that equals poor health, it’s poor planning and feeling like you’ve got to change everything all at once. You don’t. Small shifts done consistently will stick and will get you headed in the right direction for cultivating more healthy eating habits.
No one can change everything in a day—just pick two to three tiny changes to work on at a time and once those few tweaks are in place for about a month, you can move on to the next handful.
