A fun guide to healthy eating!

When I decided to buy Focus T25 and Shakeology, I knew that I would also have to start eating healthier to see any results. That freaked me out! I have tried to eat healthy before, and when I can't find anything fast and easy or healthy at all, I would start skipping meals, become starving, and then eat anything that I could find. 

In hopes to help you out and get you started on your eating healthy goal, I thought I'd give you some helpful tips that I've learned these past 4 months!

• Start off by finding some good recipes! Here is my healthy food board on Pinterest that focuses on main dishes, and I have a few other healthy food boards as well! Pinterest is a wonderful website for you to find pretty much anything, so type in "Healthy meals" or something, and you'll find a ton of results!! 
• Once you've found some good recipes (don't skimp out on this part and think you'll be able to find something later.. Do your research NOW! Unless you're hungry.. if that's the case, eat something, then come back and do your research.), MAKE YOUR MEAL PLAN! It's better to eat 5-6 smaller meals a day rather than 3 large ones. Download a meal planner, or make your own! I use a calendar white board from Walmart and each column is one day. So I have Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Snack, Dinner. Some people add an extra snack after dinner, but I've found that most days I don't need one.. and I don't have room on this calendar! If I ever do need an after dinner snack, scrambled egg whites are my fall back!

If you have your meal plan somewhere that you can easily see it, you will be more likely to plan ahead if you need to and not have to wonder what you can eat!

• That's the next tip.. plan ahead!! Do all of your grocery shopping for the week!! It's going to be hard to make crock pot orange chicken for dinner if you don't have oranges or chicken! I decided to make a three bean salad that has green beans, kidney beans, white beans, vinegar, and olive oil for some snacks this week. I mixed it all together and put it in the fridge. Now I know that I can just get 1/2 cup of it when it's snack time! (I would have put it into individual tupperware containers, but I don't have enough for that.) If I didn't already have that prepped, by the time I was hungry, I probably wouldn't want to make it. But if it's easy to grab and it's healthy, you're all set!! A lot of people make a handful of their meals on one day and put them in individual containers for the week... this is really helpful if you're out of the house for most of the day!
• When grocery shopping, buy more fruits and veggies than processed food (try not to buy processed food at all). If it's pre-packaged, it's most likely going to be way more unhealthy than a few apples. Make the produce section your best friend!

• Now that you have a bunch of food ready, GET RID OF THE JUNK FOOD!! If you're like me, then you're going to need to eat the junk food in your house if it's there.. I just can't help it! Donate it to a friend, or just help everyone out and throw it away. You don't need any temptations!!!
• Don't skip any meals!! You should be eating within an hour of waking up, and then every meal should be 2-3 hours after your last meal. When you skip meals, your metabolism slows down thinking that you're starving, so instead of burning the food you eat, it stores it into fat. NO GOOD! 

• When you're first starting out, there might be a few meals that just never end up sounding good to you.. This is another circumstance where planning your meals a week out helps! If Tuesday's dinner doesn't sound good, and you've already bought all the ingredients for the super yummy dinner you had planned for Thursday, make Thursday's dinner instead!! I do this all the time, because my taste buds are quite spontaneous.
• Always have a water bottle with you!! In one of my challenge groups, I won a camelbak water bottle that holds like 26 ounces, and it is always by me! It's a lot easier to make sure you get your water in if you have a cute water bottle that holds more than the typical "16oz" disposable water bottles. ALSO, cut out all your other beverages!! No more soda, coffee, juice, just water!! You might feel like you need the other drinks, but cut them out for two weeks and you'll see that water is really what you need!

• If you have a smart phone, download the "My Fitness Pal" app. It allows you to search for foods, scan the barcode of your store-bought foods, or put in the nutritional information on your own. You can put in everything you ate and drank for the day, as well as how much water you drank! At the end of the day, you can hit "complete entry" and it tells you how much you would weigh in 5 weeks if you kept eating/drinking/exercising like you did that day!! It's also really nice to stay accountable, and if you're going to be documenting what you eat, you're more likely to skip those five candy bars in your cupboard! (Although if you threw the junk food away, you won't have this problem!)
• There are so many other things I could say, but one last thing is how to reward yourself. We are in the type of society where we feel the need to celebrate with food. You got awesome grades? Let's go out to a fancy dinner! It's your 3 month anniversary? Get donuts!!
  
  WRONG!! Skip the food and reward yourself in other ways!! When I completed working out for a month straight, I bought myself some new clothes! You can get a pedicure, buy new shoes, get your hair done, buy that special face mask that you've been wanting to try. Get your mind out of the habit of thinking that food is the best way to treat yourself. 

You can do this!! You will feel better when you eat better, I promise!! If you need any help or motivation, feel free to email me (shaylingetsfit@gmail.com), text me, leave a comment, anything!! I want you to feel healthier!! If you missed my transformation post, check it out here!

Also, make sure to come back next week for a few of my favorite meals!!