Eating healthy: Making the transition
You’ve already made the hardest decision, that of deciding to eat healthier, but now you want to know how you can make the transition to healthier foods. This is especially true for those with families as they aren’t just preparing meals for themselves, but for everyone else in the family too. Below are a few tips to help you make the transition to eating healthier foods.
- Do Your Research. The first thing you should do is research various diets and healthy foods.
Look at the foods that make up different diets and determine why these foods are considered healthy. Then, decide which foods in your current diet you are going to replace. You’ll also need to determine which healthy food choices you’re going to add to your diet to.
- Charts Help. Deciding which foods to add and subtract from your diet can be difficult. This is why many people choose to make a replacement chart…basically, these charts help them stay on track. If you would like to make a chart, start by making two basic columns on a piece of paper.
In one column, write down the foods you would normally eat and on the other side, write down a healthy alternative. For example, if you may have a bowl of ice cream wrote down on one side and across from it have a bowl of fresh fruit salad for the alternative.
As you make work on your chart, remember that it’s good to replace white grains with brown/whole grains, processed foods with whole foods and artificial foods/flavors with natural foods/flavors. Finally, don’t try to transition too fast. Start by working on one thing at a time and then move on to another item on your list.
Increase Your Daily Food Intake. A good way to get more, healthier foods in your daily diet is to increase the number of times a day you are eating. Make a point to eat a few snacks a day and make sure they are high-quality, whole foods. This will get more, healthy foods in your body and leave less room for the unhealthy foods. It will also make the transition of switching to healthier foods easier.