Real Life Nutrition Tips You Can Start Using Today

Perfectly weighed out portions. Never shopping when hungry (uh, who’s not hungry when you go shopping after work?). Cutting out all forms of sugar, forever. These don’t exactly fit real life for most of us. Thankfully, you don’t need them. Here are some real life nutrition tips that you can start using today, and use for years to come.

Healthy eating isn’t so much about knowing what to eat as it is about knowing how to eat. If I asked you to write a list of healthy foods, you could fill an entire page. For me – that’s not where the magic happens. The magic of healthy eating happens when you figure out your obstacles and then develop strategies to move past them.

Healthy eating isn’t as simple as “eat this, not that”. You can find hundreds of celebrity nutrition tips online. I can give you the healthy grocery lists. I can give you the healthy recipes. They’re great tools – but they only work if they fit into a lifestyle that you feel is worth keeping.

Building that lifestyle is where the magic happens. You figure out your roadblocks, and you make decisions based on how you can overcome.

This is the year of taking action. Put your words and plans and goals into motion.

Here are a few of my top, pro-active tips for building a lifestyle that will make healthier eating a seamless part of your life this year.

Make a Plan

Making the right moves is much simpler if you remember the moves you are supposed to make. Take the stress out of making healthy choices by building a plan of action before your day/week starts. You’ll be far less likely to forget when you need to go grocery shopping. You will be more likely to find time in your day to meal prep. You can track the days that you hit small goals and remind yourself to celebrate the small wins.

I am a huge fan of Passion Planners. I’ve given them as prizes for my Boot Campers and for online challenges, I’ve given them to my friends, and I even bought one for my husband! I like Passion Planners because they are far more than a daily calendar. There are prompts to breakdown your goals into actionable steps (sound familiar?). There is space each month to reflect on the past month and plan improvements for the month ahead. And there is ample room every week and day to track your wins, your plans and your, well, passions.

I create a small, healthy habit tracking section each week where I track how many days I hit my goals. Things like drinking enough water, taking vitamins, eating enough veggies or protein through out the day – it doesn’t seem like a lot when you do it, but tracking helps you realize just how much effort you put in – and how it all adds up.

Do a Kitchen Makeover

There is absolutely no better month than the month of January to go through your pantry and fridge and clean out what you don’t need. Food pantries are in need of food, you’re kitchen is probably packed with food and drink that you celebrated with in December and no longer fit the healthy-eating criteria of a new year.

Here’s the thing: if a food is in easy reach, your or someone you love is going to eventually eat it. If that food is junk, it’ll be eaten. If that food is healthy, it’ll be eaten. Help yourself out by getting rid of the junk before it’s even a temptation.

I posted a step-by-step Kitchen Makeover action plan back in August. If you’re not familiar with the process or want help deciding what stays and what goes, the article breaks it down for you AND breaks down a how-to nutrition for newbies!

Track Your Portions

This is one of those “why didn’t I know this before” nutrition tips that can seriously change the way you think about food.

There are multiple ways to track your consistency and eat the right amount for your goals. You can count calories, you can count macros, or you can track your portion sizes. You can use measuring cups, a scale, or read nutrition labels.

At the end of the day, you have to do what works for you (that means on most days, with most meals, you’ll be more apt to track your consistency). I’ve found that the easiest way to do that is to use your hand to determine portion sizes, and simply make sure that you eat a balance of nutrients with each meal.

Using your hand to estimate portion sizes is much simpler than doing math. Plus, your hands are always with you!