When a new year comes, you make plans to do things differently- whether it’s to get more sleep, eat less meat, or make more time for your family. No matter what’s on your list to improve or change in the new year, we hope that it includes living your healthiest life. To help you do that we’ve put together a list of healthy habits to take into the new year (and long after).
1. Meal Prep
Meal prep is like that magic pill that actually can improve your health in a few weeks. Once you start meal prepping consistently, you’ll wonder why you ever avoided it. Meal prep lets you create healthy meals for the week ahead, which means you can be thoughtful about what you eat and avoid temptation because you already have food on hand for every meal.
To make meal prep a regular part of your life in the new year, here are a few steps you can follow now:
- Stock up on food containers. For the most long-lasting containers, look for the glass kind as they are safer under heat and will last for years.
- Find recipes you’ll actually eat. Meal prep requires you to make meals in bulk, so there will be leftovers for lunch or dinner at some point. This means finding recipes you can get excited about is a must.
- Make a grocery list based on your meal prep recipes, and be sure to include snacks and a few grab-and-go meals for emergencies
- Choose one or two days a week that you can dedicate to preparing your meals for the rest of the week.
2. Eat More Real Food
One simple way to be healthier in the new year is to eat real food. The options for manufactured food products are endless. While there’s nothing wrong with eating them every once in a while, a diet of mostly processed foods can stall your goals to maintain weight and avoid chronic diseases.
For instance, low-fat microwave meals are a convenient and easy way to cut back on calories. Unfortunately, that convenience comes at the price of high sodium that can contribute to high blood pressure and inflammation. Similarly, all those sugar-free products are packed with chemical sweeteners and additives which have actually been found to make you crave sugar even more. So those great intentions to reduce sugar can often backfire if you rely on sugar-free products.
On the other hand, real foods are packed with nutrients, natural sugars, and plenty of flavors to keep you satisfied and healthier than their processed counterparts. Eating a variety of real foods can help you combat chronic diseases like diabetes, which in part is linked to refined sugar found in most processed food.
In addition, diets high in real food are typically higher in fiber which is key for protecting your heart. Finally, real foods like beans, oils, fish, and avocado are packed with healthy fats which can be great for brain function, weight control, and skin health. So, in 2020, make a pact to get more real food into your diet.
3. Reduce Your Sugar Intake
Sugar is not your friend. Or at least artificial sugar is not. You’ve heard it before, but cutting back on the sugar in your diet can help you make huge gains in your overall health. Sugar is stored in the body as fat when it goes unused, which is why it contributes to obesity in millions of people. Type II Diabetes is also linked to over-consumption of sugar.
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If you haven’t started looking closely at how much sugar you consume in a day, make tracking your meals and sugar intake a priority. Then, slowly start to scale back to around 30-40 grams a day.
These are the biggest sugar offenders that you can easily cut or reduce in your diet:
- Sodas
- Alcohol
- Refined carbohydrates, like white bread, rice, and pasta
- Sweets. Try fruit-based treats instead of processed baked goods.
- Yogurt (read the label before you eat 20 or more grams in one cup of yogurt)
- Condiments like ketchup, dressings, and barbecue sauce pack much more sugar than you think
4. Get More Meatless Meals In Your Diet
More people are paying close attention to the meat products that they consume in recent years. While meat isn’t technically bad for you, having too much contributes to chronic diseases like heart disease, obesity, and hypertension. Meat products have been found to cause inflammation and problematic skin.
If you’re not ready to give up meat, you can find more meals in your diet to make meat-free instead. As long as you replace that protein and vitamins with healthy foods like broccoli, legumes, and other plant-based proteins, you can easily maintain a healthy, high-protein diet sans-meat. As a bonus, reducing meat consumption can have positive effects on the environment as well!
5. Give Up Diets For Good
One mistake that you might be making when it comes to controlling your weight is relying on short term diets. Just about any diet that you can think of was not created to be followed forever. So, if it promises unbelievable weight loss in a short time, it is likely too good to be true.
The best way to live and keep your weight under control is by making small and long-lasting adjustments to your diet. Whatever you do has to be sustainable for life, so cutting out something you love from your diet is probably not the best route to take.
Instead, think about putting more “good” food in your diet so that you have less room for the “bad.” Talk to a nutritionist for specific diet changes that will actually work with your lifestyle, rather than completely disrupt your life.
We hope 2020 is your healthiest year yet!
Sharita Jennings is a fitness and travel enthusiast and creator of Get Fit Like That, LLC. She is a health policy attorney and ACE certified group fitness instructor and fitness nutrition specialist. She provides online fitness plans and leads group fitness classes in Washington DC. Check out her fitness tips and workouts at GetFitLikeThat.com.
