SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It's that time of year when we set resolutions or goals to start off the new year right. Many people include healthy eating on their lists, but when we go all in on those goals at the start, it can be overwhelming and we give up before we even get started.
One of the best things you can do to keep to your healthy eating goals: take baby steps. Making small, simple changes can lead to big changes over time that will benefit your health in the long run.
Here's three steps you can start taking to get your healthy eating goal off to a good start:
1. Start incorporating more plant-based foods
Fruits and vegetables are some of the most nourishing foods we can eat. Two easy ways to get more of them in is having a smoothie or salad every day. Smoothies make an easy breakfast and start the day off right. Having a veggie-packed salad before lunch or dinner has even shown to help people not overeat, plus they add some good nutrition to the diet.
2. Meal Prep
I've talked about meal prepping here before because this makes a huge difference when it comes to healthy eating. My number one tip is to pre-chop vegetables on the weekend to use for meals during the week. This cuts down on prep time, so cooking a healthy meal won't take as long. Plus, meal prep helps you portion out the food you make and eat, so you control the amount you get each meal.
3. Read ingredients lists
My rule with ingredients is if I don't know what they are or know how to say them, why should we be eating them? Sticking with ingredients you know will help keep the heavily processed foods out of your diet.
For things like bread, the less ingredients the better . And I'm not saying you have to completely cut out bread from your diet, but you can find healthier types of bread by checking the ingredients. One of my favorite breads is a sourdough bread made by a local bakery here in Sacramento called, The Baker and Cakemaker. Sourdough bread is good for gut health and this one only has 6 ingredients in it.
I hope these tips help you start incorporating more healthy eating this year and make your goals work for you.
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