Eating healthier can be intimidating, especially when you’re busy and life gets increasingly hectic. However, meal prep doesn’t have to be too hard.
The trick is to start small and slow. Like anything, healthy meal preparation takes practice.
So it’s important to take small, reasonable, and sustainable steps to make your meals healthy.
It’s a good thing that in this article, we listed some quick and easy-to-follow ways to help make the process of making healthy, well-balanced meals easier. And no, you don’t need to be a culinary school graduate or a professional chef to pull them off.
Table of Contents
1. Think of creative ways to incorporate greens in your diet.
There are more interesting ways to eat your veggies than you think. You can eat arugula on top of your toast for breakfast, make green smoothies, or have different side salad options.
It’s a good thing there are also a lot of vegan restaurants where you can get your daily serving of greens in Calgary when you don’t feel like cooking. The most important thing is to incorporate greens in your diet daily.
You can also experiment with other cuisines. For example, Thai and Vietnamese food usually use healthy and fresh ingredients.
You can be guided by those cuisines. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things.
Remember that eating healthy doesn’t have to be boring.
2. Use healthier cooking oil.
We’re sure cardiologists will agree that you can start eating healthier by simply substituting your regular cooking oil to a healthier variety. Some healthy cooking oils are olive oil, avocado oil, sesame oil, or safflower oil.
Olive oil, in particular, is very versatile. You can use it in dressings and when you bake.
3. Avoid using excessive fat, sugar, salt, and oil in your cooking.
It goes without saying that too much of anything is bad, but most especially sugar, salt, fat, and oil. So it’s important to make substitutions or cut back on it when you cook meals.
For sugar, you can substitute honey or coconut sugar to make it healthier. For salt, you can use garlic, citrus fruits, rosemary, thyme, basil, or cumin instead.
We’re sure your local grocery or health food store carries healthy alternatives to everyday ingredients. You just have to do your research or ask the staff there about them.
4. Stock up on produce.
Having an abundant stock of the produce you’ll need to make healthier meals is crucial. So go on that farmer’s market run or have groceries and fruits delivered.
Having fresh ingredients on hand will make the process a whole lot faster and easier. Eating healthy starts with buying nutritious food and ingredients.
5. Create a meal plan.
It’s true when they say that if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. This also applies to eating healthily.
Creating a meal plan for the week can help you make concrete plans toward being healthy. This is where you make plans that won’t just stay as plans, but plans that you’ll follow through.
You can do research online for how to make a plan for a well-balanced diet with whole foods and healthy ingredients. You can even consult with a nutritionist to make sure that your meal plan is geared toward health and fitness.
Eating healthy can be a pretty daunting task, but you can start with small steps toward that goal. We hope our guide helped you in planning for a healthier diet.
Did we miss out on some more tips? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.
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