Top tips for easy, quick, healthy eating

We are busy people and Grit & Grain Nutrition work with busy people. It’s like the more that happens in our lives, the more we have to do, the less we think about healthy eating. Even when we do, we haven’t planned properly which can lead to us making bad food choices. Can you relate? Us too! However, there are some steps we can take to make sure we are eating a healthy balanced diet.

Here are Grit & Grain Nutrition’s top tips for easy and quick healthy eating.

Follow the Eatwell Guide

The Eatwell Guide  shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet. You don’t need to achieve this balance with every meal but aim to get the balance right over a day or even a week. The different food groups are:

– Fruit and vegetables – about 1/3 of what we eat should be fruit and vegetables and we should aim to eat 5 portions a day. One portion equates to 80g.

– Starchy foods such as potatoes, pasta, bread should make up another third of what we eat. Try and eat more wholemeal varieties as they are great for fibre!

– It’s advised that we eat some dairy foods such as milk, cheese and yogurt. Try opting for low fat and low sugar versions.

– The next food group is protein such as beans, pulses, fish, eggs and meat. Aim for lean cuts of meat and eat less red and processed meat.

– Oils and spreads is next up and it’s advised these should be eaten in small amounts. Opt for unsaturated fats such as vegetable, olive, rapeseed and sunflower oil.

– Finally we have a section that isn’t actually included as a recommendation as we don’t need them, these are foods high in fat, salt and sugar such as chocolate, cakes, biscuits and crisps. We should aim to eat these less often and in small amounts.    

Meal prep

As with anything preparation is essential when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle. It’s not always easy, especially when you have a family to look after, a busy career and social life and sometimes you may have all three, but it is doable.

The quickest and easiest meals we have found are stews, chunky soups, casseroles, curries. Not only are they easy to prep and chuck in the oven or slow cooker but they are a great way of sneaking in lots of vegetables. In addition these are easily adaptable so you could do two versions: one you for and one for the kids. For example, if you love the heat of chilli or curry but the kids can’t have it make one with spice and the other without spice. Another great thing about these types of foods is that they are easily frozen and can be pulled out the freezer whenever you are short on time, your own healthy ready meal, if you will!

Adapt meals you love

At Grit & Grain we don’t believe in lots of restrictions and cutting out the foods we love. Not only that but we don’t need to do that in order to live a healthy lifestyle. It’s just about balance. Cliché? Yes. But it’s true. So with that in mind don’t feel like you can’t have you favourite foods, have them from time to time and enjoy them. However, another way is to adapt the recipes you love to be healthier. For instance, when cooking a curry a lot of recipes will contain a lot of oil or ghee. Try reducing this amount and making the rest up with water or stock  or use olive oil instead of ghee, an unsaturated fat. You could also whack some extra spinach, peas, cauliflower, sweet potatoes or any of your favourite veggies to make sure they are nutritious. Finally, think about what you would have with it. Perhaps try wholegrain rice or toast some wholemeal tortillas for example. These small tweaks can be done with any recipe and it’s a great way of still eating the foods you and your family love.

Snacks

Snacks are underrated. Always have access to healthy snacks. When we get busy, sometimes we forget to eat properly which can lead to a drop in blood glucose. This drop makes us crave sweet things and can sometimes lead us to make not so good food choices. If we had a bag of dried fruit (of which 30g counts towards one of your five a day) and nuts we could have this and it may curb the craving until we can eat a proper meal. Alternatively if you are at work or at home have some chopped up veg and fruit ready to eat, this is also great to have on hand for the kids too!   

Hope these tips help and if you need any other advice on healthy eating or weight management please get in touch and have a chat with us at grit and grain or read what other people have to say about us grit and grain testimonials.

Enjoy those quick and healthy meals!