Mindful Nutrition - 10 Habits for a Happier and Healthier You
There are lots of reasons to focus on better nutrition. Some of the most common that come to mind include feeling more energized or having consistent energy in the day, getting better quality sleep, working on your internal health like supporting your gut and digestive systems, or reaching a weight loss goal. The challenge is, changing our eating habits is HARD. So many of us eat when stressed, overeat out of habit, and get picky about our daily meals and snacks, which makes even considering a diet change totally overwhelming! And even if you did decide you were ready for change, where do we even get started? There is SO much information out there that can be hard to trust and follow. Choosing whole grain bread over white bread. Be sure to get the organic options! Should I get full fat milk or fat free milk? Have you heard of gluten free? It’s a LOT!
What Is Mindful Nutrition
Feel free to take a deep breath here. It’s okay to take things slow! Keep your expectations for yourself reasonable and don’t punish your inevitable mistakes. Changing the way we eat in the midst of a busy schedule is easier said then done. With nutrition, it’s all about picking back up and trying again. With the right mindset, a good plan, and some accountability, you can transform your nutrition. I promise!
So what is Mindful Nutrition anyways? Mindful Nutrition is an approach to eating that is all about the awareness element. What am I eating, why am I eating it, etc. It’s all about intentionality and having a strong purpose behind each food choice. Most of us these days are “on the go” and “while I do X” type eaters. There are very few of us that eat and do nothing else in that moment! Mindful Nutrition helps us pause and prioritize our meals.
To start us off, here is a list of some of the ways healthy eating habits can benefit you:
Benefits of Eating Well
Quality Nutrition has such a POWERFUL impact on our bodies! So with that in mind, let’s get started with some key habits to help you be successful with nutrition. :)
Mindful Nutrition - Healthy Eating Habits to Live By
Rule One: Start a Food Journal
A food journal is a great place to get going when you’ve decided to start making changes to the way you eat. Before you can really make goals and decide what to change, you need to understand your current habits. For a resourceful food journal, don’t just write about what you eat and how much, also write about the circumstances around your meal or snack. Who are you eating with? Where are you eating? What are you doing while you eat? How do you feel about the food and overall meal experience?
Doing this exercise at every meal as you start will be super revealing—it’ll help you better understand why you even have your specific food habits and see how often you really are eating healthy foods. When you first start the journal, don’t try to change anything about the way you’re eating. Simply record your normal routine. Starting right where you are will help you create a more realistic plan to conquer your goals.
Rule Two: List What You Like and Don’t Like About Your Eating Habits
Once you have a couple weeks of food journaling under your belt, take note of what habits you like and don’t like. Make sure you include both! Congratulating yourself on good habits will help make improving the bad ones feel more possible.
Part of your plan to eat better should include continuing your good habits as well as redesigning the unfavored ones. If identifying your negative habits is difficult or stirs up a lot of emotions, a nutrition coach can be just what you need to help re-assure you, dive into the root of your experience, and help you build confidence and happiness with how you approach food!
Rule Three: Establish Habits that are In-Line with Your Goals AND Realistic
Now, it’s time to form new habits. Ask yourself what your long-term goals are. Considering your long term goals will be the starting point in identifying those first few steps you take.
Once you decide what these are, write them all down. Studies show writing down goals makes you up to 42% more likely to achieve them! Simply jot them down in your journal, or make a motivating vision board. Whatever you think is most inspiring to you!
Now that you have your goals are in mind, decide on the new habits you want to form. Make sure that each one inches you toward your future goals—and is realistic too! Going from 5+ snacks a day to none isn’t going to set you up for success. Jumping from 0 to 8 glasses of water a day won’t work either. Start with small improvements and continue to challenge yourself with each coming week.
Rule Four: Don’t Expect Perfection
Realize you may not execute everything to a T every day. All of the social pressures of food can make maintaining a nutritious diet really tough and lead to things like emotional eating, especially when no one is looking. Things like stressful work days, tempting offers, limited menus, and peer pressure are typical bumps in the road my clients usually see on their nutrition journey’s.
What I find most helpful is planning for these “bumps”. Yes! Let them happen. Why? Think about it. When you PLAN to have ice cream on Thursday (if you’re like the Osuna household), you don’t feel as bad when it’s a spontaneous “unwanted” decision. Believe me, it’s liberating! You’re going to “fall off the wagon”. You’re going to “get off track”. But rather than looking at it like you’re “on” or “off” track, look at it as your intentional plan, whether it be your meal prep that you have or a tasty treat on the weekend!
Rule Five: Focus on One Change At a Time
There may be a lot you want to change about your nutrition and fitness life, but start with one thing. While focusing on food, don’t try to set lofty goals with your exercise routine, your professional life, a current project, or anything else. Take it slow and pick something easily approachable like adding in a healthy snack to your morning commute. Once your new healthy eating habits become second nature, you can add more to your plate. (No pun intended.)
These first 5 tips are all about your mindset and approach. Now that we’ve got that solidified, check out these more specific suggestions below!
Rule 6: Hydration, Hydration, Hydration!
What can seem like such a simple task can sometimes be the hardest. Whenever I start working with Nutrition Clients, hydration is usually our starting point! We often skip out on the water intake because we don’t have time to have for frequent restroom breaks in our day, water is boring, or we just straight up forget about it. Being hydrated helps regulate our body temperature, keeps our joints lubricated, and helps transport nutrients throughout the body. When we aren’t hydrated, this can lead to drowsiness, lower skin elasticity, more aches and pains in our body, and potential increased craving in sugar. Staying hydrated is a simple and sufficient place to start on your nutrition journey!
Rule 7: Incorporate High Quality Protein + Healthy Fats in your breakfast
Whatever food we start our day off with, our body will use that as it’s primary energy source to burn for the day! If we can incorporate a good source of protein with a healthy fats in the morning (think eggs + avocado), this can help the body kick start it’s metabolism to burn body fat. Also, both protein and fats are good macronutrient sources that do an excellent job of stabilizing our blood sugars, therefore keeping our appetite steady and our energy prolonged and stable throughout our day!
Starting off our day with a sugary drink like fruit juice or highly processed items like a donuts or fast food can really spike the blood sugars high (especially right after waking up from a long sleep without food) and can cause a wild fluctuation of energy throughout your day. Not only this, but if we develop life long patterns like this, developing conditions like type 2 diabetes can become a scary reality.
Rule 8: Increase the frequency of your meals
There are a million of different diet approaches out there. Keto, intermittent fasting, low-carb, etc. Before I share about this one, know that nutrition is not a one size fits all and really should be approached to your own unique needs. However, consistency in our food routines is something very difficult to establish given the typical American lifestyle, and especially if you have kids! When we don’t have routine or predictable meal times, our bodies intake and outgo of energy fluctuates without any pattern. Without pattern, our body has a hard time burning body fat.
When we eat, our blood sugars go up. When we aren’t eating, our blood sugars drop. The bigger the increase and steeper the decrease, the more stressful that is on the body. Keeping your meals to a more frequent timing in your day (and moderately sized portions vs. super big or small), can help stabilize that rollercoaster that your blood sugars go on in a given day. A more stable blood sugar can help your body burn off the energy you need to take on the day!
Something else to consider about increasing the frequency of your meals is avoiding the extremes of overly stuffed and incredibly starving! I’ve seen where people don’t eat all day or really shrink their calories during the day but can only take that for so long, leading to a HUGE meal that wasn’t necessarily in the plan. Having some extreme eating patterns can lead to frustration, and really unhealthy habits such as binge eating.
Rule 9: Focus on what you can add in, not what you trying to take out
Where I see people tend to struggle with making nutrition changes, is getting bogged down in all the things they can’t have. Rather than focusing on all the things you can’t have, think about all the things you CAN eat! It can make things even more stressful if you’re an avid fast food person and are only focused on how you shouldn’t be eating that. Or if you have a big sweet tooth and can’t enjoy the Starbucks lemon loaf multiple times a week. There is such an abundance and variety of food out there! This simple mindset shift can be all you need to keep the excitement going about implementing new nutrition habits!
Rule 10: Follow the 80/20 Rule
At the end of the day, expecting “perfection” with your food is a lot of pressure and tends to be unrealistic for most of us. If you are eating healthy, nutrition packed foods 80 percent of the time, you should still be able to get the quality of nutrition you need AND see any results you’re looking for. It could be weight loss or gain, increased energy levels, less gut disruptions, or even better sleep! You shouldn’t have to eat chicken, fruits and vegetables all day long to see a positive change! It’s okay to enjoy that Chic-Fil-A or Starbucks every so often :)
Use these tips to start eating right and feeling better!
Food affects so much in our bodies and minds. Eating a healthy diet can make you look and feel more like yourself while propelling you toward all your ambitions. Whether you want to lose weight, relieve symptoms, or live longer, eating right is so key to your wellness goals and living a long, high quality life! Time to take charge of your diet and let healthy eating change your life!
I hope these tips have gotten you excited and ready to start! But don’t feel like you have to take this journey on our own. That’s one of the many amazing things nutrition coaching! The right coach isn’t here to make you feel bad about yourself or your situation, but instead, they’ll help encourage you and guide you toward your goals and help you with eating mindfully instead of perfectly. The approach will be totally personalized to your needs to help you win!
Core Life Habits Nutrition Coaching also goes beyond just talking about food. In our coaching, we will dive into the why behind your food choices, how it’s impacting other aspects of your life and relationships, and implement realistic changes at a pace that’s right for you! Together, we will get you to all your healthy living goals! :)
