How to Use a Daily Planner for a Healthy Eating Routine
The saying 'you are what you eat' isn't as silly as it sounds. If the body is filled with nutrients, the organs can work better and you feel well overall. If the body is filled with sugars, fats and salts, the heart has to work harder, cholesterol rises, and arteries can become blocked. A daily planner can transform your eating habits, and help you to develop a healthier eating routine.
Why a Healthy Eating Routine Works Better Than Dieting
Healthy eating isn’t the same as dieting. Fad diets often promise great results, but are harder to stick to in the longer term, and foster unhealthy body images and expectations. It is far healthier to develop a balanced healthy eating routine that suits your lifestyle. Once healthy eating becomes a habit, it becomes integrated into your daily life.
Daily planners can help you to develop a healthier eating routine by setting out your meals for the day, week and month, so you know exactly what you’re eating well in advance. You can plan in detail for the day’s meals, including ingredients and required preparations.
List nutrients or foods you need to fit into your diet in your daily planner. Vitamin C can be boosted with citrus fruits, whilst oily fish is key to building Vitamin D in the Winter months. If you suffer with iron-deficiency, spinach and chickpeas are perfect to boost iron intake naturally.
Healthy Eating Daily Planner: Why Consistency Matters
The success of your routine relies on two factors - consistency and understanding.
To encourage yourself to be consistent with your healthy eating routine, choose foods that fit with your lifestyle. If you’re working long hours, don’t expect yourself to produce elaborate meals day in day out. Keep it simple.
Healthy eating doesn’t have to be complicated. If making the meals becomes a chore, it will be harder to continue. Instead, focus on staples. These are key ingredients that you can mix and match for a variety of different nutritional meals. For example, couscous and quinoa are low in fat, but provide carbs and protein for your diet. Similarly, adding vegetables to your meals is key. Having a wide variety of colours on your plate is an indication of a balanced meal.
Understanding the impact of foods on your body is also important. For example, some fats are often good for us in moderate amounts, such as omega-3 fats. These fats are often found in oily fish, and can reduce the risk of heart disease, depression and cancer.
Reviewing Your Healthy Eating Routine in a Daily Planner
Using a daily planner for healthy eating also gives you the opportunity to examine how well your healthy eating routine is working for you. As well as recipes, use the daily, weekly and monthly planners to record how you feel after the meals.
If you are managing health issues, you should note how certain meals impact your symptoms. Many conditions including IBS, diabetes, and heart disease can all experience benefits from adjustments to your eating habits.
Look for days where you found it difficult to stick to your healthy eating routine. Were there any particular foods that you liked? Any that improved your overall wellbeing? What recipes were easy to make? Anything that you found challenging?
However, don’t be tempted to guilt-trip yourself. It’s important to focus on developing a balanced diet, rather than becoming fixated on counting calories. In a balanced diet, there is nothing wrong with enjoying a treat.
Developing a healthy eating routine can improve your health and boost your mood. A daily planner can help you create meal plans that really work, and build good eating habits. Keeping a balanced diet can help you to enjoy your food, and feel healthier, more than ever before.
