Top Five Healthy Eating Recommendations from a Registered Dietitian
Looking to create healthy habits with your nutrition but don’t know where to start? Here are five recommendations for you!
When it comes to making healthy choices, it can be hard to know where to start with how overwhelming and confusing nutrition can seem. Starting small can be really impactful. Instead of eliminating entire food groups or trying to cut out sugar, I love for people to focus on is positive changes that are realistic for them and their lifestyle. Implementing some of these tips can help you be healthier overall in a non-restrictive and sustainable way. Here are my five favorite tips when it comes to healthy eating habits.
1. Focus on what you can ADD, not subtract or restrict from your diet.
The minute you get restrictive and focus on all the things you take away from your diet, is the minute you are setting yourself up to feel like a failure. Now this may seem harsh, but truthfully all that restrictive diets and eliminating sugar from your diet is only going to make you want sugar MORE! Which is why I would much rather you focus on what you can add to your diet rather than take away. So, let’s say you really want the burger and fries for dinner. That’s just fine and go ahead and order just that! But, maybe you can consider also adding a side salad with the meal to incorporate some more veggies. It really can be as simple as that! Which brings me to #2…
2. Start small.
Don’t think that you have to entirely overhaul your diet and what you are eating to be “healthy.” Remember that at the end of the day, being healthy looks different for everyone. By taking tip #1 and focusing on what you can add, these can be small changes that will go a long way and can be habits you can build upon. Making such huge changes isn’t what is going to be sustainable or you and lead you to thinking that your health is all or nothing. Start with small and realistic goals that you set for yourself such as having one serving of vegetables a day or drinking one extra glass of water. When you can confidently do that for a few weeks, add on to that! This will take you much further in your health goals than trying to meal prep, count calories, workout, get enough water, etc. if these aren’t things you have already built strong habits with.
3. View foods neutrally.
This recommendation is key for sustaining a healthy relationship with food. I don’t know how many clients I have to have the conversation about good versus bad foods, but I will continue to do it again and again until I am blue in the face! Your relationship with food is just as important as what you are putting into your body and the way you view foods can make a huge impact in your progress overall. It’s been engrained in our minds that cookies are bad and apples are good. But truthfully, our bodies don’t really know the difference between what we are eating other than the chemical makeup and the process that our bodies take to digest the different foods. Our bodies don’t sit there saying “oh this is a cookie, this is bad and I am going to store this as fat” just as our bodies don’e sit there saying “oh, this is an apple, this is good and I am going to lose weight for eating this.” Start to view foods more neutrally and you’ll be amazed at how it makes you feel!
4. Meal prep in a way that is realistic for you.
Again, no need to go big or go home here when it comes to meal prep. I feel like honestly meal prep can seem daunting enough so if you’ve never taken a shot at it, I would suggest taking tip #2 and start small. Look at your lifestyle, your work week, and decide what is going to be realistically helpful for YOU. Don’t prep every single meal for the week just because everyone on Tiktok is showing you how to. Start with 2-3 meals or even just your snacks for the day. A little can go a long way with saving you time and energy for the week when it comes to being prepared. My favorite thing to do for meal prep is to not prep 5 different meals and 5 different recipes, but to prepare the components of some of my meals for the week. What do I mean by this? If I am going to be making a sheet pan meal or a stir fry for instance, I will take some time after grocery shopping to wash, chop, and store the veggies and other components of the meal that way when it comes the day I planned on eating that meal, my prep time is basically non-existent and I can throw the meal together super quickly. Meal prep can also be as simple as some frozen steerable veggies or 90 second rice. It doesn’t have to be fancy for it to work and do its purpose of allowing you to have quick and ready to go meals that leave the guessing out of what to eat!
5. Balance your plate.
When you are able to, try to make the majority of your plates balanced with a protein source, a carb source, and a fat source (if you aren’t able to differentiate between the three macronutrients, I would love to help you and please feel free to pop over to Instagram and send me a DM @balancedbynutrition). Setting up your plate/ meal this way is going to lead to satisfying meals that are satiating and leave you full until your next meal (or snack of course). Add in fruits and veggies for some extra brownie points when you can, but don’t beat yourself up if sometimes your meal isn’t as well balanced because at the end of the day, you are human and we all aren’t perfect eaters! In fact there really is no such thing and at the end of the day I want you to prioritize your nutrition, but not take it so seriously that it stresses you out to the max.
I hope these tips/ recommendations were helpful for you to start to focus on some sustainable healthy habits and things to consider when it comes to your nutrition!
- Megan
