12 Healthy Eating Changes to Make for a Spring Reset

Let’s ditch the diets and set some healthy eating goals that going to stick

It’s not about cutting food out, going on strict diets or being obsessed with scales. Instead, it’s about making small healthy changes that will fit into your life, and noticing how your mind and body feel when you make these positive changes in your eating habits.

Change the focus to how you want to feel rather than your weight

If you focus on how healthy food makes you feel rather than the scales or how you look, the rest will follow.

Although maintaining a healthy weight is vital to lowering disease risk and living a longer healthier life, focusing on weight and how you look too much can be detrimental.

It is perfectly okay to have a goal to say lose 5Kg over 10 weeks. Aiming for 0.5kg per week is a healthy and realistic approach to weight loss. It allows you to slowly make small changes to your eating that won’t disrupt your life too much and help you to form new healthy habits.

The secret to easy weight loss is to start to notice how healthier food choices make you FEEL.

By reducing the intake of processed foods high in sugar, fat or salt, and increasing wholegrains, fruit and vegetables, your energy levels, mood, sleep, concentration, self-confidence will all naturally improve.

In fact, you will feel so good that you’ll want to keep the good feelings going and the weight will just fall off without you even focusing on it!

Forget the Diets

Food should not be feared and fear is the response most diets generate around foods.

‘Diets’ and tight food restrictions that cut out whole food groups put too much pressure on you, which is why you may cave and grab a cookie from the cookie jar… then maybe another… and another… and another.

The reason this happens is because you have labelled that food as “bad” or “forbidden,” which makes the humble cookie so much more desirable.

When it comes to healthy eating, we say NO to rules and restrictions and YES to listening to what your body really needs to feel good.

Instead, allow yourself to have a cookie and don’t feel guilty. But always make sure your number one priority is to nourish your mind and body by fuelling yourself with lots of fibre and nutrients – you may notice that you are actually too full for that cookie!

Make small changes to reach a bigger goal

If your healthy eating goals look something like ‘I am cutting out sugar this week’ or ‘I’m only eating salads this week,’’ then the likelihood of you falling off the bandwagon is pretty high. Going cold-turkey is not sustainable.

Instead, try “This week, instead of eating half a block of chocolate each night, I am going to eat one row.” or “I am going to increase the amount of salad or veggies on my plate this week.” – Make baby steps each week!

12 small changes you can make that will stick

Why don’t you pick one or two new ones each week until you form lots of new healthy habits:

✔️ Increase your veggie intake by adding grated vegetables to mincemeat based meals (bolognese and burger patties), fried rice and pasta bakes.

✔️ Swap white bread, wraps, pasta and rice for brown grainy varieties.

✔️ Add lentils to mincemeat based meals to reduce the amount of meat you eat and increase plant foods – check out our Lentil and Mince Pattie Cheeseburger Recipe.

✔️ Make nearly all your meals and snacks at home. Check out these Healthy Snack Ideas.

✔️ Make a double batch of your meals so you have a healthy lunch the next day – try doubling a batch of our yummy and low-cost Morrocan Chicken recipe.

✔️ Avoid pre-packaged meals in the supermarket – they have lots of hidden fat, salt and sugar. See our simple Guide to Reading Nutrition Labels at the Supermarket.

✔️ Swap soft drink and juice for water flavoured with fresh fruit. See our Fruit-infused Sparkling Water Ideas.

✔️ Don’t skip breakfast – this will help to prevent cravings later on. Check out our yummy Overnight Oats recipe.

✔️ Don’t include junk food as part of the weekly shop – if it’s sitting there, you’re more likely to eat it. Check out our guide to shopping at the supermarket.

✔️ Monitor your portions – use our portion guide in your Nutrition Plan.

✔️ Chew slowly and stop eating when you start to feel full rather than when you’re overfull. See our Three Simple Steps for Eating More Mindfully.

✔️ Drink a glass of water before eating a meal or snack.

 

Need to make some more healthy eating changes?

Download our Love Your Legumes recipe e-book. We make healthy versions of your favourite meals and boost their nutritional value by adding in legumes. Start feeling healthier now!

Love Your Legumes Recipe e-book

Download your very own food diary!

Keep a track of your food, mood and exercise. Start to make healthier changes, then start to see the changes in your mood, energy and body. This is a great place to start if you are wanting to make real change.

Download Here

Need some more inspiration?

Head to our RECIPE VIDEO HUB – we have lots of healthy snack ideas you might want to try!

Download our family healthy eating plan to find a 7-day meal plan full of yummy healthy eating or login to download your personal nutrition plan to help create a healthier eating pattern. This is FREE to all members.

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