Health conscious eating can give you the energy you need to get through the day, while keeping you healthy and strong. Eating for health means more than just aiming to lose weight; you may not even need to lose weight at all. A healthy diet is well-balanced and nutritious and is custom-tailored to your lifestyle. Here are five ways to tell that your eating habits aren't health conscious enough:
1. You Skip Meals
Eating habits are health conscious when you make the time for each of the meals you'll need for the day. While it's true that overeating is bad for your health, so is not eating enough. If you regularly skip meals, you aren't getting the adequate amount of nutrition you need. In fact, if you're skipping meals because you hope to lose weight, this unhealthy choice may have the opposite effect. Because your body thinks it won't be getting enough food throughout the day, it'll actually put more food into storage (i.e., convert it to fat) if you don't eat three light meals and a few light snacks throughout the day.
2. You Don't Think Ahead
While it's possible to eat in a health conscious way even without planning ahead, it's much more difficult. For example, if you quickly decide to have lunch at a restaurant, you're not calculating how many calories you've consumed throughout the day or what food groups you need to consume during that meal. While you may find a healthy option, chances are if you're rushed and not putting much thought into the meal, you may make an unhealthy choice. If you map out your entire meal plan before the day begins and then pack a healthy lunch, you're much more likely to make healthy conscious decisions.
3. You Get Ravenously Hungry
If you become ravenously hungry at some point during the day, you're probably not practicing health conscious eating habits. You're likely to give in to unhealthy cravings and practices, such as eating sugary snacks or consuming large food portions. Skipping meals and not eating enough light and healthy snacks throughout the day can make you ravenously hungry.
4. You Don't Have Healthy Snacks on Hand
Most people need snacks between meals in order to keep their blood sugar up, delay hunger pains and give them a boost of nutrition. However, it can be tempting to head to a vending machine and purchase an unhealthy snack. Sugary snacks and snacks with too much salt are examples of foods that aren't beneficial to your health. Even some less unhealthy snack choices, such as crackers, aren't as nutritionally beneficial as your snacks could be. You should always have healthy snacks (fruit, veggies, yogurt, etc.) easily available so you can grab a snack that will be beneficial to your health and avoid the common unhealthy temptations.
5. You Dine out Too Often
Eating at a restaurant can prove to be both unhealthy and straining on your pocketbook. Chances are, if you eat at a restaurant, you're going to make less health conscious decisions. When you make your own meals, you retain better control over what you eat. Eating out more than a couple of times per week could prove to be unhealthy.