How to make healthy eating a priority

By Bio Island Nutrition Team

After a long, busy day it is hard to get ourselves motivated and kick ourselves out of the slump. So what are the best ways to get ourselves moving again and making our health a priority? Often the more organised you are the easier it is to stay on track. Below are some tips to make your health a priority and to make sure you put yourself first.

1. Make a list – This is one the easiest steps to follow and keeps you accountable for what you need to do in the upcoming week. Sundays are a great day to get organised and prioritise the week ahead of you, this can be done by writing things down, setting calendar reminders or marking the dairy. By creating a shopping list you can plan out all your meals for the week, this also means that if you have to the time to do meal prep all the lunches are done and ready but it also eliminates that indecisiveness during the week that ends up to you just buying fast food because you cannot be bothered to decide what to eat and then cook it after a long day.                                                     

2. Keep it simple – To stay healthy and keep motivated finding dinners that are minimal effort will keep you on the right track. Think recipes like one tray bakes with chicken and vegetables or a casserole in the slower cooker. It makes life a lot easier and means you are consuming healthy home cooked food. Keep an eye out for some healthy Bio Island recipe ideas.

3. Create habits you enjoy – The most important thing is making sure you enjoy making healthy eating and exercise a priority and hopefully it then becomes a no brainer. Find food that you love and thoroughly enjoy. This will keep you compliant, there is no point eating food just because you feel forced to or doing exercises you drag your feet trying to complete.                 

4. Get moving – This can be anything from walking in your lunch break, to joining a team and playing your favourite sport, if you a moving you are going to see results. Exercising releases a multitude of neurotransmitters such as endorphins, dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. Endorphins play an important role in our mood and behaviour so the more we do something the more likely it is going to be a habit and be one we enjoy, since we get all those happy hormones released once we do it.

5. Treat yourself! – Life doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom; we need to remember to treat ourselves every once and a while. We also want to remember to not use food in a reward system as this is how unhealthy habits start. When we say treat yourself it means if you are going out to a social event don’t let your diet restrict what you are going to eat, enjoy the moment.

To maintain and prioritise healthy eating it’s all about small sustainable changes that you can maintain for the long term. Make the important changes things you like and enjoy which will turn into positive outcome and keep you focused.  It’s important in our busy lifestyles to prep a little, seek out a good meal and get happy moving.