4 Tips for a Healthy Diet With Nutritious Food and Snacks

Dieting and weight management have been around for as long as I can remember. While it’s important to regulate and eat healthy food for you and your body, diet culture has leaned more on the toxic side of the scale in recent years. Unlike healthy diet culture, toxic diet culture includes all types of extreme methods that do more harm to your body than good. For example, it includes starving yourself to unhealthy levels, and over-exercising. This leads to eating disorders and a terrible relationship with food.

On the opposite end of this spectrum, we have something known as Food Freedom. The term is not complicated. Basically, all it means is allowing yourself the freedom of eating what you love and want (in moderation). This means you say goodbye to restrictive diets and diet culture in general.

Both the terms are in practice today. Yes, Food Freedom did pop up a few years later than diet culture, there are still many people who diet extremely, and many people who indulge in complete Food Freedom.

Is there a way to enjoy Food Freedom while dieting? Yes! Maybe you won’t follow the complete definition of Food Freedom, but you can take pointers from it to make your diet healthier and tastier. Eating healthy food and healthy snacks without going to extremes and starving yourself, and actually enjoying your diet is possible- you can learn all about it in this blog!

Follow a Healthy Diet With These Tried & Approved Practices!

1. Upgrade Your Food Picks

Dieting does not mean eating grass! Contrary to popular belief, healthy food can be extremely tasty. Food is meant to be enjoyed, and most nutrition is adapted only through hearty meals. You must strive to understand nutrition science and study all that a body needs. A slim body is hardly a healthy one.

A healthy body needs a balance of all nutrients such as Protein, Vitamins, Minerals, and even Carbs and Fats! There’s a reason why we crave fats and carbohydrates, in moderation, they give our body nutrition and mental well-being. That does not mean you eat pizza for a week!

But, you can make a healthy version of a pizza, using similar and healthier ingredients. Upgrading your food choices is all about empowering them, and finding healthy alternatives to your favourite food that’s junk. There are so many ways to spice up a salad or bring fun to your fruits. All that matters is that you are eating the food intake necessary for you in a day!

2. Understand Where Your Cravings Come From- And Find Healthier Alternatives

Someone who follows a toxic diet develops an unhealthy relationship with food. If you starve yourself by eating minimum food throughout the day your body does not become healthier. Instead, you lose weight in an unhealthy manner, making you weaker and decreasing stamina, and poses a risk of developing bulk-eating disorders. All in all, it’s terrible for your physical and mental health.

When we crave a food or snack item, it’s our brain sending signals to tell us what’s wrong or missing. If this happens, connect with what your gut is saying!

I don’t mean to eat whatever you want to like unhealthy amounts of sugar, caffeine, or alcohol, but to understand what you are craving at the very core. Once you understand the food you crave in different situations, you can start intuitive eating. All you will have to do is find healthier alternatives, that manage your sugar levels, are energy-boosting, are better for your sleep, and don’t cause you stress. These nutrition options will allow your intuition to be better connected with what your body really needs, and your preferences will start to shift automatically. In a sense, this is a healthy way to practice Food Freedom!

To take an example, your craving for candy can come from the stress hormone; cortisol. Xinoa Bites Bars are Energy Bars that are sweet in all the right ways while also being extremely healthy, with nutritional and natural elements. Once your mind knows that it realizes its stress, you can eat healthy snacks like a Xinoa Bites Bar to replace the unhealthy sugar you want.

3. Practice Healthiness Beyond Food

Nutrition and being healthy isn’t just about what you eat, it’s also about how you live. Anything that is unhealthy in your life- be it a habit, or a relationship harms the quality of your living. That’s why it’s important to make sure you are healthy in all walks of life, not just food!

Experts from the industry say that the human mind and body often rely on coping mechanisms that aren’t healthy when you are stressed, tired, or unhappy. One of these is craving unhealthy foods full of bad cards, sugars, or high levels of fats. Making lifestyle changes such as fixing your sleep schedule, and practising mindfulness, can curb this craving. If you are feeling down all the time, go for a mental health checkup. Many times several mental health issues stem from not getting an adequate amount of nutrients.

4. Make Lists and Follow Schedules- They Actually Work!

A Food Schedule is what I like to call the food plan for my day. If you are very conscious about what you eat and want to diet, food scheduling allows you to do so without causing problems to your body.

Food Schedules include meal preps, deciding what you will want to eat for the entire week, and making sure you have all of the ingredients you need for it ready. This also includes healthy in-between snacks to make sure you are not leaving your stomach empty for too long. Apart from getting complete clarity on the healthy food, you will be eating, you also get the satisfaction of ticking off your checklist!

Conclusion

A healthy diet and healthy Food Freedom are both possible. All you need to do is to change your mindset. Changing your mindset to embracing that food helps us grow, develop, and grow, will automatically change your eating habits. It’s essential to realize that our body often craves what it lacks- so it’s okay to eat what you want, in healthy alterations and moderately. The end goal is to develop a healthy relationship with the food!