Healthy food habits

I am sharing my top clean and delicious tips for anybody who is beginning to eat better or wanting to work more healthy habits into their diet or their lifestyle for me when I first began to stop dieting and commit to eating better for the long term I used clean eating as my guideline which is where clean and delicious came from so my definition of eating healthy and clean is simply this

Eating real whole unprocessed foods as close to their natural state as possible most of the time so eating foods like vegetables fruit healthy sources of carbohydrates like sweet potatoes and grains high-quality sources of protein and healthy fats like avocados nuts and seeds one of the most important pieces of this process is realizing that it's not about jumping on a fad diet or onto the next health craze it's really about making a long-term commitment to a lifestyle shift for yourself this way you are not feeling like you are victim to mood swings and cravings that come with eating.

a lot of highly processed nutrient-void foods which brings me to my very first tip allow yourself to be on the journey when you are a beginner adopting new lifestyle changes and habits you have to give yourself a little bit of space to figure it out don't feel like you need to do everything at once and everything at the same time you don't need to have all your food perfectly meal prepped and you don't need to stop eating all of your favorites this is going to be a process of learning how to do things a new way and that's going to take a little bit of time so if you notice your brain wanting to go to that all or nothing style of thinking just recognize that that is diet mentality and that it doesn't work what you want to do is give yourself a little bit of permission to slow down create some space and learn example a young student

number two healthy eating does not and is not supposed to look the same for everyone you can be a healthy eater and be a vegan you can be a vegetarian you can be a meat eater you can be a weight lifter you can be a yogi you can eat two times a day you can eat six times a day and you will also notice that your lifestyle will affect the type of healthy diet you're eating so for

versus a working mom of two with a family versus a young professional right all of these people can eat healthy diets and you will see that their plates look very different based on the style of their day and the style of their life right so there's no hard fast rule here other than that simple tie-in that we are eating real whole unprocessed foods as close to their natural state as possible most of the time and we are

enjoying the food that we choose number three cook as often as you can making your food is one of the easiest ways to eat better because you are in charge of all of your ingredients so you know exactly what you're working with and here's the deal that doesn't
mean that you have to cook every single thing you eat just try to get into the habit of cooking more than you don't and technically my friends that is only 51 of the time number four focus on quality over calories now.

I have noticed for many people that when you are focused on counting calories you tend to get caught up in feelings of restriction and deprivation and that is because when the brain gets to work trying to stay under or at a certain amount of calories. what it tends to do is pay attention to what it can't have or what it needs to be restricted or what it needs to be eliminated and those thoughts that thought process creates the feeling of deprivation now if you switch your focus to quality the brain starts looking for things that it can add into the diet and all of a sudden food becomes a whole new playground and it's fun and it's creative again and so not only does it feel good but it tastes good number five what grows together goes together. when you buy foods that are in and of the same season they automatically taste good together because mother nature has our back so in case you've never noticed things like brussels sprouts and grapes butternut squash and cranberries berries and basil.

these foods all grow in the same season
and they all taste amazing together which is good to know because it takes a lot of guesswork out of your cooking a great way to have a little bit of fun with this is maybe when you go to the grocery store you pick up one to two new ingredients each week and
experiment with it in your kitchen try a new method of cooking it the taste test a little see if you can find some new favorites this is why I've created my ingredient 101 series. I don't
want you guys to feel overwhelmed or intimidated by trying new ingredients so if you feel like you need a little extra help make sure to reference.

one last thought and good thing to keep in mind is that when ingredients are eaten in the season they grow in they both have better flavor and a higher nutritional value so it really
truly is a win-win to eat with the seasons
number six has some back-pocket recipes
when you are transitioning into healthy eating it is so helpful to have a handful of recipes that you know you like and that you can make in a having a few bars for breakfast lunch and dinner and then slowly but surely as you experiment with new things when you
have a keeper you can add it to your back pocket this way when you feel like you don't have any time to think you can always lean on this list to help you stay aligned with your goals.

number seven learn to read your labels learning how to read your labels is a really easy way to recognize what's going into your body and a great general rule of thumb to follow is to simply focus on the ingredient list you want that list to be five ingredients or less
and you want to make sure that each ingredient you can read recognizes and
pronounce the number eight avoid highly processed foods now just to be clear.

A lot of healthy foods are slightly processed so for example oatmeal is slightly processed quinoa is slightly processed frozen vegetables are slightly processed i mean basically if it's not coming straight from the farm or the field it's going to begin a series of processing but these slightly processed foods are not the foods that i am referring to and they are certainly not the foods that you need to be concerned about the foods that you want to be avoiding are those very highly processed foods these are the foods that are going through lots of steps and lots of processing before they ever make it to your plate some people like to call them franken foods these are basically foods that are made in the factories and here's the thing the real problem with concentrated in fats sugars and salts that they really wipe out your palate because they're bombarding the taste buds with this concentration of fat sugar salt and so we can't appreciate the natural flavor and subtleties of real whole foods and i do think that this is why healthy eating gets a bad wrap so if you find that you do eat a lot of highly processed foods what you want to start to do is baby step your way out of that so you can start to appreciate real whole subtle flavors again and of course you want to work on learning how to infuse lots of flavor into your foods .

Number nine avoid artificial flavors sweeteners and non-fat foods these artificial flavors and sweeteners are designed to bypass the logical part of your brain and trigger all of those pleasure points in the brain so what happens is you find yourself wanting more and more and more and you don't even know why you kind of feel like you're not in control of the whole show because sort of you're not and because it's not real food your body is not even sure what to do with it plus we tend to play this little psychological game with

ourselves when it comes to fake sugars and non-fat foods which is well doesn't really count so i can have more of it and i know that all my dieters out there know exactly what i am talking about and studies have shown that eating artificial sweeteners actually creates more desire to eat more number 10 sugar so we actually end up cutting our nose off to spite our face practice meal prepping now you don't have to have a instagram or pinterest ready fridge right i know that's what a lot of people think when we think about meal prepping but i do think it's a good idea to get in the habit of learning how to cook once and then eat two three four times because this is going to save you a lot of time and a lot of sanity in the long run and you can start off really easy so maybe you just make one big pot of soup and then you use that for some lunches or for some dinners during the week or maybe you just set yourself up with some overnight oats and then you have your breakfast all ready to go i know how helpful meal prep can be so i do have a meal prep playlist if that's something .

number 11 stock your pantry and your freezer keeping some healthy staples on hand in your pantry and your freezer can be a huge help when time is not on your side I know for myself I love to have things in my pantry like tuna salmon canned soups beans and olives and then in my freezer, I always have frozen fruits frozen vegetables some type of frozen brown rice or frozen quinoa I also like to keep veggie burgers in the freezer and I have these cauliflower crust pizzas that we like to have in the freezer and so this way when you're in a pinch you know you've got something that you can lean on and you can also use these items to build a meal with some of the fresh ingredients you may have in your fridge.