Simple Eating: Your guide to healthy food choices

Hello! And welcome to the Simple Eating series on thothub. I’m excited to start this series because it’s so near and dear to my heart. I’m back in school to become a registered dietitian (one more year to go!) and juggling work, crossfit, and my social life. Staying organized and focused on healthy eating has been a struggle.

My youngest sister is about to move into her first apartment and recently asked me how to eat healthy. You see, growing up, we didn’t get many cooking lessons from my mom. We weren’t involved in meal preparation, so we never really learned how to make anything. Yes, my mom very successfully passed on the importance of making smart choices and controlling our potions, but when it came to cooking chicken or cutting up produce, I was a little lost.

So what is this series about?

It’s about learning the basics of cooking and making smart, healthy food choices. We’re not becoming Martha Stewart. We’re not following any strict diets. We’re not counting calories or measuring out carbs. We’re not abolishing any food groups. We’re just figuring out what it means to eat well in a way that fits out busy lifestyles.

This series is for college students or other young adults who have used the excuse, “I’m just too busy to eat healthy,” a few too many times. It’s for the people who aren’t super comfortable in the kitchen yet, and just want to start with the basics. It’s for those of us who really don’t like complicated recipes and feel silly standing in the seasonings aisle looking for some herb we’ve never heard of. It’s for those of us who need the basics without the bullshit.

What am I going to have to do?

First and foremost, be patient with yourself while you learn. You’re not going to feel like a healthy eating expert overnight. You’re going to forgive yourself when you make decisions that are less than ideal. You’re going to realize that you need to be realistic about what you can accomplish.

But you know what else? You going to have to agree to not give up. To not throw in the towel when you’ve fallen off the wagon. This is a never-ending process. A lifestyle. What you’re doing now, building this foundation, will stick with you for life if you stick with it now. We’re making habits. Really good ones. But habits are hard to create. So be patient.

With that little warning, let’s dive right in!

Healthy Eating Tips:

1. Set aside time for grocery shopping, prepping your healthy snacks, and getting meals started. Yes, it isn’t a whole lot of fun to plan ahead, but it’ll make everything so much easier for you.
2. Use your planner for more than homework due dates or work meetings. See when you have less busy evenings and plan to cook on those nights. That grocery shopping time in #1? Write that in, too.
3. Never have an empty cupboard. If you have nothing healthy to eat in your fridge, how can you expect to make smart choices?
4. Get used to shopping differently. You used to pick up quick boxed meals and pasta bags in the middle aisles. Now, you’ll be spending most of your time in the perimeter, grabbing fresh produce, meat, eggs and a few frozen items.
5. Embrace leftovers. When you’re cooking a meal, it often makes more than you should eat in one sitting. That means tomorrow’s lunch or dinner just became effortless (yesssss).

This is just the beginning. Over the series, we’re going to talk through kitchen necessities, the food groups, simple breakfast and lunch options, smart snacking, and some easy easy dinner ideas. Here we go!