Woman eating salad at home
Eating healthy can be a challenge, especially if you lead a busy lifestyle. If you work full time and you also have familial responsibilities and leisure activities, getting all your nutrients can seem almost like an impossibility. That’s not the case, though. There are ways for you to eat a healthy diet even when you seldom get a spare minute, and here are five of the better ones.
Cook Your Meals Ahead of Time
One way that you can be sure that a healthy meal awaits you is by taking a free afternoon or evening and doing the cooking for the next several days. You can get fresh ingredients from the store and prepare several meals at the same time, by steaming, sauteing, or stir-frying vegetables and lean meat or fish. You can make sauces and keep them separate, and you can boil potatoes or cook some brown rice. You can then have these cooked ingredients in your fridge, where they will keep for several days. You can then put them together to make a meal in a matter of minutes.
Order from Meal Services
Ordering from a meal service is not the same as ordering a pizza or some other choice with dubious nutritional value. Meal services send you the fresh ingredients along with instructions on how to combine and cook them, and they arrive at your door already portioned out. If you want a shortcut for meal prep San Diego has several of these services available. Do a little research and select the one that seems like it would be a good choice based on your dietary preferences.
Smoothies
You can also sometimes substitute a fruit or vegetable smoothie for a more substantial meal if you are on the go. You shouldn’t do this three meals a day, but it’s okay to grab a smoothie for breakfast or lunch if you know that you need to be at work or somewhere else shortly. You can shop for the ingredients beforehand, and it’s a simple matter to prepare and combine them in a blender. Grab your smoothie and take it to go, drinking it in the car or on public transportation.
Buy from Farmers Markets
If there are farmers markets around, these are also great places to grab a meal on the go. Rather than getting a fast food burger, you can get a couple of pieces of fresh fruit or some freshly baked whole wheat bread from one of the stalls. The produce was probably picked within the last day or so, so it’s not going to come any fresher, and you’re stimulating the local economy, too.
Don’t Skip Meals
The last thing that you should keep in mind if you’re always in a hurry is not to skip meals. You should never try to tackle the day on an empty stomach, and breakfast is often the meal that people neglect. If you can eat a healthy breakfast, it’s always preferable to do so, but even if you must resort to grabbing something from a fast food restaurant, that’s better than nothing.
Each day we make choices about our fitness, and the best way to try and ingest healthy foods is to plan ahead. It’s when you feel rushed that you either skip meals or resort to unhealthy alternatives, and you should avoid that.