Here's the first article in collaboration with the Healty Food Club! Good reading!
While cardio is a crucial building block to any healthy lifestyle, making mindful choices when it comes to food can help improve performance, energy levels and overall results. However, when classes get hectic and an extra large meatlovers pizza with a side of hot wings is only a few taps of an app away, it can seem like a chore to try and eat healthy.
Here are four practical tips to help students like you kickstart a healthy eating journey.
Start simple. There is an overwhelming amount of information out there covering nutrition. One article tells you one thing, while the next post says the opposite. This can make it seem like there’s no point because if you make a choice and commit to a certain plan, it could end up causing more harm than good. An easy way to begin your healthy food journey, is to start simple and focus on eating whole ingredients and cutting back on processed foods. This enables you to get a better feel for what you actually enjoy eating and at the same time, gives your body a larger amount of nutrients that it might be missing with more processed alternative.
Take it slow. Oftentimes, people looking to transition into healthy eating, attempt to make drastic changes without any transition time. They go all-in on a restrictive diet and can end up burning out, binging or doing actual damage to their health. A great tip for students looking to make some changes is to take it slow. Start out by eating two healthy meals out of three per day, with at least one cheat day per week. A more sympathetic plan increases the likelihood of a long-term change, which is the ideal outcome when striving for a healthier life.
Plan your meals. Time is a limited resource for most students, which means that if food choices aren’t planned out in advance, the potential for less-healthful choices can increase. To avoid the temptation, and even save some money, plan your meals in advance and prep over the weekend to reduce the possibility for future indecision and inconvenience.
Keep it fun. It’s not uncommon for people to associate healthy eating with boring, restrictive diets. However, making smart choices with your food doesn’t have to mean that dinner is going to be grilled chicken and broccoli every night. Keep it fun, and try out some new recipes to keep yourself enthusiastic and on track. There are loads of Instagram and Youtube accounts dedicated to quick, inexpensive, and delicious recipes for people to try out at home, give something new a try.
In addition to trying out these tips, it’s also crucial for those new to healthy eating to not be too tough on yourself. Don’t get caught up in the day-to-day, look at the larger trend, and try to make mindful choices where possible. These decisions will build upon each other and lead to a more balanced life in the long run. To get more information on how you can incorporate healthy eating into your daily life, take a look at the TCD Healthy Food Society website, and sign up for the free monthly newsletter, Food For Thought.
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