The New Year tends to be the time when people make changes to their lives. This can be all sorts of things, setting goals and aims like quitting smoking, ticking things off the bucket list, saving money; but probably the most common New Year’s Resolution of all, is to lose weight, exercise more and live a healthier lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle doesn’t necessarily have to be with the aim of losing weight. It can be to get into better shape, or simply for a healthier body and mind. What we put into our body has a definite impact on the way that we feel, and it’s fair to say that the healthier we eat, the better we feel.
Whilst we are fresh into the New Year and you may be looking for a bit more motivation or advice, we thought we’d give you some tips on how to live a healthier lifestyle.
A healthier lifestyle is easier to stick to than a ‘diet’
A lot of the time, you will find that people don’t really stick to diets for very long. This is because they can be quite restricting, and involve cutting out certain food groups or types of food that you enjoy. There are thousands of different diets out there, and although some may work, a better alternative is to change your lifestyle. Rather than vowing never to eat a chocolate bar again, or cutting out all carbohydrates, switching to a healthier lifestyle is all about balance. It means that you can still eat the things you enjoy, but in moderation.
Sometimes when we try a diet, not eating certain foods can actually result in a lack of energy, or make you feel a bit down. It’s probably a common fact that a lot of people don’t enjoy dieting, because they can’t eat what they want to. However, if you make simple changes, to your lifestyle and the way that you eat and exercise, it means that you can still eat the things you like, but maybe less frequently, or switch a few things out for healthier alternatives, but so that it is still enjoyable.
What are the healthier alternatives?
A healthier lifestyle still gives you a considerable amount of freedom in what you eat. The difference is, you can experiment with new things, and swap certain foods out for healthier alternatives, that are still very similar and tasty. To give you some help, we’ve listed a few ideas below:
- Sweet potato instead of normal potato
- Dark chocolate instead of milk/white
- Margarine instead of butter
- Smoothies instead of milkshakes
- Bunless burgers
- Anything with reduced fat or sugar to the regular version
- Switch to organic foods
- Bowls instead of burritos
- Goats cheese instead of regular
- Whole Wheat pasta instead of regular
- Cauliflower rice instead of regular
These are only a few suggestions of how you can replace certain foods with healthier alternatives and still enjoy it. However, making these changes gives a big impact to your healthy lifestyle.
Eat regularly
Sometimes, if we try to just stick to standard meal times with nothing in between, we can get hungry and tempted, and sometimes overindulge on food during these intervals. The best way to tackle this, is to eat more regularly, but with smaller portion sizes. This keeps us more full up throughout the day and lessens temptation of eating between meals. Prepare small healthy meals with the right balance of all food groups, throughout the day, and this should prevent hunger and temptation to snack.
Reducing sugar intake
We all know that too much sugar is bad for us, but what we maybe don’t realise, is what a difference it makes when we reduce our daily consumption. Not only can it aid weight loss, but it makes for a much healthier lifestyle, with reduced risk of things such as diabetes and heart disease.
These are only a few ways that you can live a healthier lifestyle. Making small changes to what you eat and still allowing yourself to eat what you want in moderation is the best way to maintain a healthier way of living.
