How to Eat Healthy When You Have No Time
You start with the best intentions: You bookmark healthy recipes, pick up kale and quinoa at the grocery store and buy a pressure cooker. But then something happens. You get slammed with a huge work project, you find yourself taking care of sick kids (or parents), or you spend all day running errands. Whatever the reason, life often leaves us no time (or energy!) to prepare meals. So you swing by the drive-thru or phone for a pizza, which leaves you feeling bloated and discouraged about ever eating healthy again.
You’re right to be concerned. “A diet that’s high in saturated fat, sodium and sugar can lead to obesity , elevated blood cholesterol levels and high blood pressure — all of which are risk factors for heart disease. But there are ways you can whip up wholesome meals at home without investing tons of time planning meals or grocery shopping. You can also eat healthier when you’re on the go. We recommends these strategies to help you stay on track even when you’re feeling frazzled.
Healthy Restaurant Options
Many restaurants now offer lighter fare on their menus, often with calorie counts. Take a quick look at restaurant menus online to see which ones provide the best options before you head out. Then consider these tips when ordering:
- Eat a small salad or broth-based soup first. It’s a nutritious and filling start to your meal that will help you consume fewer calories overall.
- Choose veggie-based entrees or those with baked, broiled or grilled fish or skinless chicken.
- Look for meals that aren’t greasy or oily. For example, instead of ordering cheese-covered chicken enchiladas, get the grilled chicken or fish tacos. Choose food items without creamy sauces or gravies.
- Ask to substitute veggies or salad for fattening sides such as fries, coleslaw or butter-laden mashed potatoes.
- Portions served at restaurants can be too big. See if smaller portions are available. Restaurants often offer “half” salads or sandwiches upon request. If not, ask for a doggie bag and be prepared to take home one-third to half of the meal.
- If you crave dessert, opt for fresh fruit or sorbet.
Better Fast-Food Choices
Eating fast food doesn’t mean you have to down a fatty cheeseburger and salty fries. These days, there are a variety of menu options where you can find healthier picks. Many fast-food restaurants also have their menus, with calorie counts, online.
Smart picks for a quick and easy meal are places where you have more control over what goes into your order. At a sandwich shop, it’s easy to make healthy adjustments such as no mayo, extra veggies and whole wheat bread. (Plus, they also often have salads and soups.) Ethnic eateries that offer build-your-own bowls, vegetarian options or grilled meat and vegetable plates are good bets, too.
But if you’re passing through a traditional drive-thru, keep these tips in mind:
- Avoid fried food (e.g., french fries, onion rings, chicken strips and nuggets).
- A grilled skinless chicken breast sandwich is lower in saturated fat than a burger.
- Order the smallest sizes — don’t “supersize” anything. Ordering the kid’s menu version of your favorite fast food can give you the taste you crave with far fewer calories.
- Skip calorie-heavy sides and toppings.
- Bypass sugary drinks in favor of water, unsweetened tea, or fat-free or low-fat milk.
Convenient Home-Cooked Meal Kits
If the time it takes to gather recipes, plan what you’re going to eat for a week and grocery shop is what’s holding you back from eating healthy meals at home, there’s an easy solution: meal subscription boxes.
There are more than 100 different companies that box up multiple meals’ worth of groceries and deliver them to your house each week. Sure, the cost is more than if you did the meal planning and shopping yourself, but many find the convenience worth it. When your meal box is delivered, you can just throw the premeasured ingredients together and follow the cooking instructions to get portion-controlled, tasty dinners on the table in minutes. You get to choose from a constantly rotating list of recipes. Many companies offer low-carb, low-calorie, gluten-free or vegetarian options as well. And you avoid buying ingredients that go unused and sit in the fridge.
“Whether you’re dining out or eating in, it’s important to think about a balanced diet. “That means making sure you’re getting a good mix of lean protein, vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy low-fat dairy.”
With such a wide range of convenient meal options available — and the information you need to make smart, heart-healthy choices — you can feel good about what you eat even when life gets busy.
Diabetes-Friendly Recipes
Overview
People living with diabetes face many questions when it comes to diet and meal planning. The goals of healthy eating for those with diabetes are to support a healthy weight and maintain blood glucose levels. With a little instruction and inspiration, it is easy to accomplish these objectives – deliciously.
Like anyone following a healthy lifestyle, people with diabetes should opt for plenty of vegetables, fruits and lean protein. Sugary foods, starchy vegetables and refined carbohydrates should stay on the shelf. But dark leafy greens, protein-packed beans and other legumes, fish (those rich in omega-3 fatty acids like salmon and trout) and fiber-rich whole grains like barley, provide a wide variety of tastes and nutrients to combine creatively.
The right recipes ensure that people living with diabetes can say “yes” to dessert. Delicious berries and other fruits (fresh or dried) combined with yogurt, ginger, nuts and even a touch of whipped cream can tempt everyone at the table while ensuring optimal health.
Low-Fat Recipes
A low-fat diet may be used to manage digestive issues, promote weight loss or control conditions involving the liver, pancreas or gallbladder. Maintaining a collection of low-fat recipes can inspire tasty meals and snacks made from a combination of healthy low-fat foods.
Most health experts recommend that low-fat diets contain less than 30 percent of daily calories from fat. In other words, for every 100 calories consumed, a low-fat food product should have 3 grams of fat or less. In addition, the daily calorie contribution of saturated fat should not exceed 7–10 percent.
A balanced low-fat diet should include a variety of fruits, leafy greens, beans, legumes, lean meat, whole grains and low-fat dairy. To make it easier to stick to a low-fat diet, health experts recommend developing a nutritious meal plan that includes low-fat recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.
Low Cholesterol Recipes
Following a low-cholesterol diet is an excellent way to maintain cardiovascular health while reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke. Thanks to tasty low-cholesterol recipes, people who choose to follow a low-cholesterol diet don’t have to sacrifice flavor for good health.
Dietary cholesterol is a fat-like substance found in animal-based foods, including meat, egg yolks, fish, poultry, milk and milk products. The amount of cholesterol a person eats can affect blood cholesterol levels.
A balanced low-cholesterol diet should include a variety of whole- and multi-grain foods, low-fat/fat-free dairy products, fruits and vegetables. Fatty fishes and foods high in omega-3 fatty acids are also recommended. Cardiovascular health experts suggest avoiding or limiting animal products high in saturated fat, fried foods, high-fat processed meats and saturated oils.
Low-cholesterol recipes outline instructions for preparing healthy and tasty options, including entrees, soups, salads, smoothies, snacks, sauces and desserts. Health and nutrition experts can provide additional information on low-cholesterol recipes and nutrition.
Think Twice About Following Food Trends
They’ve all received their fair share of media buzz over the last few years. Because they’ve been touted as doing everything from lowering cholesterol to preventing cancer, it makes sense that you’d want to try these healthy foods.
But is going out of your way to find the latest superfood, giving your kale a massage to make it tender or trying to figure out how to make quinoa taste good worth it?
“Every little paper that suggests that a certain food is good for you gets blown up in the media. It’s confusing for people because one study will say coffee, eggs or whatever other food is great while another will say it’s bad. But what’s far more important than focusing on health food fads is having an overall healthy eating pattern.
Misleading Healthy Food Headlines
Most people imagine a scientific study to be a controlled, cause-and-effect experiment that takes place in a lab. But studying people and their habits is much more complicated. “The majority of food studies aren’t providing conclusive evidence. “They are simply giving theories based on observing a group of people. It’s not a controlled experiment.”
The majority of food research is based on observational studies, which means a group of people is followed to see what happens over time. Studies search for answers to questions such as: Who lives longer? Who is more likely to develop a certain illness? Who is happier? Scientists attempt to determine what factors in people’s lives could be responsible for certain outcomes.
But the problem is that one group of people who make a particular lifestyle choice such as drinking coffee can be different in a variety of ways from people who don’t: “Maybe they sleep more or less, eat more fruit, exercise more, make more money, have a better job or are different races or ethnicities. It’s just impossible to tease out the effect of an individual food out of someone’s busy, complicated life.”
Better Than a Diet
Instead of focusing on a few healthy foods to eat, it’s much better to have a healthy eating philosophy that guides your decisions when you’re planning meals, grocery shopping or going out to eat. Otherwise, it can be difficult to navigate the more than 200 food decisions you make each day, most of which are done on autopilot.
For example, if you follow a Mediterranean-style diet — which has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease — you’re more likely to make decisions consistent with that philosophy of eating whole and nutritious foods. You’ll select more vegetables and fish at the grocery store, use olive oil in your cooking, and choose salmon and couscous over macaroni and cheese at a restaurant.
“It’s better to ignore the hype about individual foods and instead try for an overall healthy eating pattern, like the Mediterranean diet. “There’s good evidence that it leads to better heart health, although we still can’t say whether it’s the nuts or the oils or point to any specific food within the diet as being the one that makes the difference.”
A healthy eating pattern includes more vegetables and fruits, whole grains, lean proteins such as fish and chicken, and healthy oils. Processed, packaged foods aren’t part of a healthy eating pattern.
You can have dark chocolate on occasion, a cup of coffee a day, or include this or that healthy oil, as long as it’s part of a general healthy diet pattern.”
Heart-Healthy Eating on a Budget
It’s a myth that eating healthy has to cost big bucks. “You can spend much the same as you do now and wind up with a heart-healthier diet. It comes down to making smarter choices. Here are some ideas for eating better without spending more.
Compare labels.
“From a health perspective certain foods are less desirable than others at a similar price. For example, different varieties of milk cost roughly the same, but skim milk and 1 percent milk provide less saturated fat than 2 percent milk or whole milk. The same is true with yogurt. Some yogurts, although labeled “low fat,” are high in calories and sugar, he says, so by comparing the Nutrition Facts data on the labels, you can make a healthier choice that’s low in both fat and sugar without spending more.
Skip processed foods in boxes and bags.
Whole foods tend to cost less than processed varieties, while sparing you the added sodium and sugar that can lead to weight gain, diabetes and heart damage, according to Stewart.
Be aisle-smart.
Shop mostly from the outer aisles of your market. That’s where fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy, fish and meat tend to be displayed.
In the middle aisles, look for heart-healthy canned tuna, salmon and sardines; frozen unprocessed fish fillets; and dried or canned beans (rinse them before you cook to lower sodium content). Add beans to meat dishes so you won’t need as much meat—this simple step will lower the cost and your saturated fat intake.
Look down too: Often the priciest items are shelved at eye level, while cheaper store brands are placed lower.
Pick what’s in season.
When produce is plentiful, it tends to cost less. So corn is a better buy in summer, while apples are a bargain in fall and winter, for example. The United States Department of Agriculture provides a season-by-season list of fruits and vegetables.
Don’t shop when you’re hungry.
You’ll be less tempted by junk food and impulse buys—like those fragrant bakery items and the handy snacks at the cash register.
Cook more meals at home.
research shows that people who cook meals at home eat healthier and consume fewer calories than those who cook less often.