Even if you ever managed to improve your diet and eat healthy meals, there’s a good chance you slipped back, and least a little bit, into your old eating habits. But don’t beat yourself up. Changing your diet and trying to lose weight is not easy. The secret to success may just be in learning how to stay motivated to eat healthy foods in the long term.
3 Ways to Find the Motivation for Ongoing Healthy Eating
One of the basic things that makes healthy eating difficult to sustain is the way in which we approach it. If weight loss is your main goal, you may set a target weight as a measure of your success. But, if you don’t reach the goal of a certain weight, it can discourage you from eating healthily. And that’s part of the first way you can stay motivated for healthy eating.
- Set the Right Goals – Of course good eating habits are a big part of achieving healthy weight loss. But many weight loss diets don’t depend on eating healthier foods. In other words, your goals for improving your diet shouldn’t necessarily relate to your weight. Instead, look for other ways to measure healthy eating success, like staying within the recommended daily calorie intake for your age, weight and sex.
- Try to Eliminate Processed Foods & Junk Food – Actually, they are sort of one and the same. But just this one step will go a long way towards making your diet healthier. Processed foods are generally high in unhealthy ingredients like salt, sugar and unhealthy fats. When you cut them out of your diet, you not only stop eating all that bad stuff, but you replace them with healthy whole foods, like fruits, vegetables and whole grains, that are full of good nutrition and fibre.
- Cook in Bulk – Preparing your own meals is the best way to know exactly what you’re eating. But if the idea of cooking every day doesn’t exactly motivate you, then set aside one day a week to prepare your meals in bulk. And look for healthy, fast alternatives, like our high-protein snack bars, to fill in the gaps.
If you liked this post, check out our recent article that tells you how an apple a day can keep the weight away.