Eating Healthy When Healthy Eating Isn’t A Priority
In this post, I will discuss my top tips for eating healthy when healthy eating isn’t a priority for everyone around you.
Eating Healthy When Healthy Eating Isn’t A Priority
Today I want to talk all about eating healthy in a household where healthy eating isn’t a priority for everyone. What I want you to understand is that not everyone wants to eat healthy, and that’s OK. A majority people think eating healthy means only eating grilled chicken breast, brown rice, and broccoli for every meal, every day, and never EVER having a cookie or a slice of bacon. But you and I both know that healthy eating doesn’t mean you have to be a perfect little health nut. It also doesn’t mean you need to eat clean 100% of the time. But some people still don’t want to hear about it. So what do you do when healthy eating isn’t a priority in your household but you still want to eat healthy? In this short blog post I will discuss my tips for eating healthy when healthy eating is in the priority to everyone else around you.
If you’re interested in hearing my views on healthy eating that everyone and anyone can do, I covered how I eat in a previous post, click this link here to read my post about the 90-10 rule of dieting.
OK, now let’s have a quick chat about eating healthy…
Eating Healthy Tips
Tip #1:
Set guidelines for yourself.
If your goal is to eat healthy, set yourself up for success by giving yourself guidelines. For example, if you want to eat healthy, make a promise to yourself that you will eat healthy when you say you will. If you want to eat healthy for five days a week, make sure that five out of the seven days of the week you’re eating healthy. Another example, if you want to eat more vegetables, set the guidelines for yourself to always have at least one vegetable per meal. By setting guidelines for yourself you’re setting yourself up for success. It’s like the saying, “fail to plan, plan to fail.” If you fail to set guidelines for your self, the others in your household will inevitably get you off track and you will be right back to square one.
Tip #2:
Know your strengths and know your weaknesses.
I have a short story for you. There is a guy named Matt, he has a terribly bad sweet tooth. Matt knows that if he wants to eat something sweet like candy, or ice cream, he will have a horrible time controlling himself to not eat lots of other sweets. So what should Matt do?
Well, if you haven’t already guessed it, the Matt in the story is me (shocker, right?!). I have a terrible, terrible, terrible sweet tooth. And you know what, it doesn’t help having the queen of sweets living in the same house as me. If you don’t know who I’m referring to, click this link right here and I think you get a pretty good idea of what I mean. So, how can I satisfy those sweet tooth craving’s, and still stick to my healthy eating? What I do is I have my treat right before I eat my full meal. I take my time eating it, enjoying each bite, and when I’m done I drink some water, then eat my entire meal. Now, I have satisfied my sweet tooth, and I’ve broken away the cravings because I’ve satisfied my hunger by eating my entire meal. When I’m done, I usually don’t want anything else. I know my weakness is sweets and I know my strengths are eating (eating healthy, I mean…*clears throat*). So if I can outweigh my weakness with my strength, it’s always a win.
Try it for yourself the next time you have something in your way that is unhealthy but you’re able to have your healthy meal.
Tip #3:
Keep more healthy food options available.
This one seems pretty obvious, but if you keep more healthy foods available than unhealthy things, there’s a good chance that when the unhealthy things are gone, the healthy things will have to be eaten. Growing up my mom pulled this trick on me and my brothers all of the time. She would buy “healthy” options and a few unhealthy options (I use those terms loosely, if you saw the “healthy” options…well, they wouldn’t be deemed healthy with what you and I know now, but thanks anyway, Ma!) She would tell me and my brothers to finish whatever we opened, BEFORE we open something else. So, we would of course go to the unhealthy foods first, and when they were gone, we would have no option but to eat the “healthy” foods…then she would eventually replenish our stocks but we couldn’t go to the unhealthy options until we finished the “healthy” options we had opened/started to eat.
The nice part about this strategy is that you’re not forcing healthy eating on anyone who doesn’t want to eat healthy or have healthy eating as a priority. Rather, you’re giving them what they want (the unhealthy foods) and giving yourself what you want (healthy foods). If they happen to eat more than what they have, maybe they will decide to eat some of yours… And maybe they will end up liking it!
Who knows?
Wishful thinking never hurt anyone, right? Haha.
Tip #4:
Tell everyone.
Tell everyone in your home or wherever you spend a majority of your time that you’re working on a personal goal to improve your health. Make sure you don’t throw anyone under the bus by telling them that you want to eat healthy and they have to eat healthy too if they’re going to be a part of your life. That’s not the way to handle it (unless you’re just cray cray like that, I’m sure that would work for some…but I like this approach better).
But let’s be honest, no one likes to be told what to do, especially when it comes to something like eating healthy. Also, make sure you don’t make the other person feel inferior to you because you’re choosing to eat healthy, just let them know of your personal goal to improve your health.
You may even want to consider asking them for their support?
Have that other person who doesn’t want to eat healthy hold you accountable.
Ask them to speak up if they ever see you going for something unhealthy, and tell them that it will be a help to you if they help to hold you accountable.
People like helping other people, especially if it doesn’t require much effort on their part. If you make them aware that you’re working on yourself for your own health, without belittling them, asking them to help you could be a great way to achieve your goals…you may find that they want to start eating healthy as well. And guess what, when you really hold yourself accountable and stick to it, the results will show and speak for themselves.
Who knows, maybe they will join you eventually?!
Great ideas! I like the one about finishing the unhealthy snacks and only have healthy snacks available!