In no particular order (and not an exhaustive list), here are 10 things you can do this weekend to help your nutrition goals:
1. Track your food – it can be very hard to know what needs to change if you are working from guesswork. Tracking your food will give you a great picture of where you are now and what are the simplest things that need changing that can have the biggest impact
2. Drink more water – aim to have about 2 litres of water a day, lots of us are drinking nowhere near this. And sorry but coffee and teas don’t count towards this target!
3. Cut the crap – by now, we all know that chocolates, jellies and the likes aren’t exactly ideal foods to make up the mainstay of our diets. Some now and again can be fine but lots all the time won’t help you to hit your nutrition goals. Pick up a piece of fruit instead of that chocolate bar
4. Eat breakfast – running around for the morning without eating breakfast will make us far more likely to reach for the box of donuts or pastries that was left into the office for whatever birthday or leaving that’s happening this week. Have breakfast, your energy levels will be on a far more even keel and you’ll be far more likely to stay on track
5. Prepare your food – set aside some time over the weekend to prepare some food for the week ahead. It doesn’t have to be all meals at once. To start, make enough for your lunches. Stews or curries are great, add all the ingredients to one big pot and cook away. Find a handful of recipes that you like and are simple to prepare, cycle through these every week so you can keep some variety in your food
6. Make friends with Tupperware – You’ve prepped your food, now you need somewhere to put it. Buy 5 lunchboxes, portion your food into them (you followed step number 5 right?), mark them with the days of the week and store them in the fridge or freezer. Make it as simple as you can so there’s nothing to stop you grabbing your nice healthy lunch from the fridge
7. Bring snacks – if you are out and about for the day having some snacks close to hand will make it far less likely to reach for that sugar loaded treat from the nearest shop. A small handful of nuts and dried fruit in a bag can work well here
8. Eat your veg – the more the merrier ad the more colourful the veg the better. Its very hard to overeat on veg and chances are you aren’t eating enough of it, load that plate up
9. Sleep more – most of us end up operating on far less sleep that we need. Aim for at least 8 hours a night. You’ll be amazed how good you’ll start to feel and how much energy you’ll have after a few nights of proper, restful sleep
10. Start with something simple – pick one of the other items on this list, the one you know you can definitely start now and just go for it. Small changes lead to big results and small changes are more likely to last