Maybe you have every intention of drinking green smoothies and milling your own grain, but the healthy living bandwagon keeps rolling right by your house without stopping to pick you up. Even if you’re not ready to change what you’re eating, there are simple things you can do to improve your eating without changing what you’re eating!
1. Ditch the screen
Don’t eat in front of your phone, your computer, your phone, your iPad…or even a book. When you are eating, just eat. Devote your full attention to the food on your plate. Have you ever polished off a bowl of chips while watching TV…and not realized they were getting low until your fingertips scraped the bottom of the bowl? Not only did you zombie-eat a few hundred calories, but you probably don’t even feel full…and your stomach isn’t getting the fullness signal either, thanks to your lack of focus. (PLUS – did you know that when watching TV, your metabolic rate is even lower than when you’re asleep?! That means that your hard work in your training sessions is getting wasted….)
2. Chew
Well, that sounds like common sense…but are you chewing? I’m not going to break out the twenty times per bite rule (although…), but the quality of your chewing has a lot to do with the quality of your digestion. More chewing = more nutritional bang for your buck and improved…function. (Need I say more?) Plus, you have nothing better to do now that you stopped eating with a distraction.
3. Sit down at a meal space
Time to dig the dining room table out from under Mount Postal! Find a meal spot and try eating your meals there, rather than on the couch (no point, anyway, since you ditched that TV…) or standing at the kitchen counter. Give yourself some external cues that you’re eating a meal and your body will thank you with reduced snacking urges later on.
4. Eat on a (rough) schedule
Try to eat at the same times every day (and, for most people, every 3-4 hours). Your body will appreciate the schedule, your metabolism will stay cranked all day long, and your junk food cravings will evaporate as your body learns to trust its energy sources. I know that work schedules fluctuate in the real world, but do your best to nourish yourself regularly!
5. Eat moderate portions at each meal
We still haven’t changed a single food that you’re eating, but moderating your meal size can have tremendous positive effects on your blood sugar. If you split your daily food intake into 4-5 medium-sized meals, your post-meal comas should be gone…and you might just see the tape measure start to move from this change alone!
Even if you’re not ready to start changing what you eat in a day, these five changes can help you feel (and maybe even look) better and enjoy your meals more! Health and fitness start on the inside, so why not give one of these five tiny changes a try today?