Easy Tips to Eat Healthier

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Do you want to eat healthier? You’re not alone. On my new patient intake forms, one of the questions that I ask is what are your health goals. By far and away, the most common goal I see listed is to eat healthier and lose weight. I hear all sorts of reasons for why people aren’t eating healthier: it costs too much, I don’t have time, I’m not sure what to eat, it’s not convenient for my lifestyle, etc. Maybe you’re reading this right now and have your own excuse in your head. So I’m going to do my best to give you some easy tips to eat healthier that you can incorporate into your lifestyle right now!

Make Better Breakfast Choices

To me, there’s no better breakfast, and more convenient, than to make a healthy smoothie in the morning. For those who aren’t a big fan of vegetables, a smoothie in the morning is an easy way to sneak in some undetected vegetables. Breakfast can be tricky because of marketing tactics but don’t be fooled, there’s no such thing as a “healthy” cereal. There are plenty of other healthy options but when I make my smoothie in the morning, it takes me less than 3 minutes and I can take it out the door with me and drink it as I drive to work. I change up what I put into my smoothie but generally the format follows:

eat healthier smoothie

6 oz Water

Banana

Spinach (very generous handful)

Berries

Hemp Protein

Scoop of Peanut Butter

That particular smoothie keeps me full from 6am until I eat lunch around 11:30am and it tastes great to me. You can switch up what you want in the smoothie but always make sure you include some veggies!

Avoid Eating After Dinner

The most common time of day for people to eat crap (technical term there) that they shouldn’t is after dinner. Are you a chronic post dinner chocolate eater? Let me guess you have good intentions of only eating part of the chocolate bar and then you end up eating the whole thing. Do you sit in bed eating cookies binge watching Netflix before you go to bed? There are many bad choices you can make. Don’t be an offender, cut out the crap after dinner and you will definitely be a healthier eater.

Don’t Use Busy as an Excuse

I often hear I’m too busy to eat healthy. It takes me about 8 minutes to prepare a quick and easy healthy dinner. I put whatever meat my heart desires along with a bunch of vegetables into a pan and 8 minutes later, I have a piping hot, healthy meal. Yet all these people who don’t have time, stop at a drivethru after work, and end up spending just about the same amount of time as it takes me to prepare a healthy meal while spending 2-3x more than it would to eat at home. Eating healthy is too expensive you say?

Other Additional Tips

-Eat more vegetables, please

-There isn’t a 100% right or wrong way to eat for anyone

-There are no magic supplements to make you lose weight

-Don’t get burned out on a particular diet

-The less ingredients something has the better

-Try not to eat out of boxes or cans

-You can’t eat healthy out of the microwave

-It’s ok to have a cheat meal, just don’t turn it into a cheat week

-Make sure you’re exercising on a regular basis

-Dr. Brian Damhoff DC MS