How to Eat Healthily without Trying

A HelloFresh guide to Eating Healthily without Trying

That it’s easier or cheaper to choose convenience over health might be one of the biggest myths of our modern age. Somewhere along the line, it became hard to imagine to Eating Healthily [capitals to capture the gravity of the situation] was something that could happen without much effort, or even happen at all.

When did it all go so wrong? When did we forget that we had the keys to healthy eating all along? We thought it was about time we set the record straight, so here’s a little primer for eating healthily – with minimum effort.

Eat 3 Square Meals a Day

Snacking – because we’re hungry, bored, or unfulfilled by a proper meal time – is a killer. Especially because when you reach for a ‘snack’, you reach for something that is going to tell your brain “There! Salty/Sweet/Fatty! Are you happy now?!” as quickly as possible. That probably means that it isn’t full of lovely, wholesome slow burning energy. If you must snack, try to choose something protein rich and unprocessed. And if you’re snacking because you skipped breakfast, or because you thought half a packet of Jatz was a reasonable lunch? Get it together! Eat a proper meal, enjoy it, and feel satisfied for hours afterwards. It’s what your Mum would want (and if you must snack, make it worthwhile).

Shop For Real Food

A lot of the time, our excuse for indulging in less than wholesome fare is “It’s all I had in the pantry!” or “I didn’t have time to make something proper, so I just grabbed a snack”. It seems obvious, but healthy eating starts with healthy shopping. Don’t buy highly processed food and it won’t be around to tempt you later. Stock up on nuts, fruit and vegetables and cheese if you must have snacky foods in the house. For the rest of your shop, it’s a good rule of thumb to not buy anything your Grandma wouldn’t recognise as food! Think legumes, veggies, bread, pastas, grains, meat and eggs.

Eat the Rainbow

This is the easiest hack for eating healthily ever: the more colours, the better! Colours in food represent their nutritional content – so if you’ve a plate bursting with reds, greens, oranges, browns and whites, you can bet that it’s also chock full of everything you need for a balanced meal.

Consider your Methods

How you prepare food is just as the important as the ingredients you’re using when it comes to eating healthy meals. Our recipe developers love oven baking and roasting, because none of the vital nutrients are lost when cooking veggies, and because it uses very little fat or oil. Eating raw veggies (in salads, julienned with some hummus, massaged with a little oil and lemon) is also a wonderful way to up the health factor in any meal.

Try Meat Free Mondays

No matter your diet or current healthiness, going meat free for one day (or even one meal) a week can be incredibly useful because it’s a chance to teach your body that it can feel full on what we can sometimes think as the ‘filler’ in a meal – you know, the green stuff, the salad, the side dish. Upping the amount of veggies you eat is a great way to get plenty of dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals into your diet, with very little fat or other less than desirables.

Variety is the Spice of Life

Above all, remember to keep it interesting! Eating a variety of food is the key to nourishing and satisfying yourself. If you’re having trouble branching out, why not give HelloFresh a try? Before long, you’ll have built up an unassailable collection of healthy meals inspired by cuisine from all over the world.