I usually only post fashion/style related articles as this is mainly a fashion blog, however, a few weeks ago I brought up the subject of losing weight in a healthy way and a few of you seemed to be interested in me writing this post. Before I start this post properly, I want to clarify a few things, as I know this is a very touchy subject. I am not writing this thinking "I know better and you should do as I say", in fact, I know very little about healthy eating compared to so many other people, but recently I have become quite interested in this subject and have done a lot of research. I am writing this post simply as a means of sharing my tips, the things that work for me, and should normally also work for you. I care about other people's wellbeing and I am disgusted with the way the media and major food companies are taking over people's minds and their conceptions about food. Studying retail, and therefore also marketing, has additionally helped me open my eyes to a lot of marketing tricks that people are sucked into, which may also have triggered my interest in this field.
With this post, I am not trying to pressure people into thinking they need to lose weight. The post is about being healthy, and weight loss is a consequence of good and healthy eating.
Eating healthy does wonders for your body and skin, it gives you more energy and enhances your mood in general. Your body is not a waste basket. One could even ask: "Do you really hate yourself that much that you will only feed your body bad food?" I read somewhere about the human body being compared to a battery operated machine, batteries in this case meaning food. If you put bad batteries in your machine, it will perform badly, just like your body will after eating bad food.
My tips are super simple. They don't require much additional effort to your daily life. It is simply about changing your lifestyle. Slowly but gradually.
1) Eat in moderation, stop when satisfied
When having a meal, stop eating as soon as you feel satisfied, rather than when you feel so full that your stomach might burst. Extremities are never good, regardless if you are feeling super full or starving. Besides, if you feel satisfied after eating X amount of food, why keep eating? Something I used to do, especially when I ate in restaurants, was trying to eat ALL of the food on my plate, because I paid for it and it's a special occasion, and so on. I have now realized that all that doesn't matter. Restaurants have a default size for each meal so that this meal would work for everyone - big men or small children, which doesn't automatically mean that you need to finish it all off. Your health comes at a higher value than money wasted on food. It can be difficult at first, but you will get used to it and after a while, I swear, you will hate feeling too full and avoid it at all costs! Something I do to help me eat in moderation is cut my food into small pieces, in that way it takes me longer to eat it all. You might notice this in my fruit pictures below.
2) Eat dinner from a small plate
This kind of ties in with my first point, to eat in moderation. No one ever said you need to eat from a large plate. It is just something that has become an acceptable norm in society and somehow everyone thinks you should have dinner from large plates. I'm not sure how it has come to this, whether it was the impact of movies or TV food adverts or whatnot. Anyway - large plates create the illusion that they are half empty, psychologically making you think want to eat more, even if you don't necessarily need another portion. Let me demonstrate with the picture below! Both plates have the same amount of food on them (I tried my best :P). If you will eat from the large plate, you are likely to feel like you haven't eaten so much, however if you eat from the small plate, you will normally feel quite full and satisfied.
3) Drinks that are often misconceived as healthy
... but are actually not. At all. Some of them are super obvious, although I still see people drinking Diet Coke and saying that they are on a healthy diet. If we put aside all the sugar and chemicals that have been added to Coke, at least think of all the side-effects of drinking such a bad drink. Most of these drinks are marketed as healthy, but what actually happens, is that a lot of companies try to play on those "healthy" people that don't really read the ingredients. ALL the above drinks have so much sugar and chemicals in them that you could as well go pig out at Macdonalds instead (please don't, though). Even Innocent smoothies are not good for you, as all the natural fibers are stripped off from the fruit they use and the smoothie is only left with sugar and lots of calories. Also, they are definitely not completely natural as they stay on the shop shelves for days or even weeks without rotting away. Try to make a natural smoothie at home and see how long it stays decent looking/tasting. I give it a day or two! Did I mention that most of the above drink companies are owned by Coca Cola (including Innocent)?
Some other drinks that I would recommend skipping are cow milk (I don't want to tell why you should stop drinking milk as it will give me loads and loads of hate, so please do some research on it yourself) and juice made from concentrate.
If you really are serious about being healthy and losing weight, drinks you would ideally consume are water (!!!), lots of green or mint tea and natural juices (No Tropicana! Only home-made juices).
4) Sweet cravings - healthy snacks
And no, healthy snacks are usually not what you can find at supermarkets labelled as a "healthy snack". It is perfectly normal to have a sweet tooth and crave sweet things after your meal, or even all day long (like me, haha). I ALWAYS have desert after eating, doesn't matter whether it's during breakfast, lunch or dinner time. The catch is that my desert is fruit. And lots of it. The more colors, the better! It tastes amazing and with time you will forget all about candy and stuff. If you have a hard time getting over candy cravings, try to read the ingredients at the back and it might put you off for life. Pork gelatin in your typical Haribo sweets? No thanks. Gelatin is literally made of leftover animal parts at factories, such as bones, skin and so on. That's freaking disgusting, if you ask me.
Fruit is very rich in nutrients and there are millions of reasons why it's beneficial for you. Additionally, a full bowl of fruit (like in the 3 photos below) is so filling that it can be a meal alone. I usually have something like this at night when I'm hungry but it's too late for a cooked meal. Doesn't it look good?
5) Skip junk food
I know this is super-duper obvious. However it is an important part of this post! Now, most people usually associate the term "junk food" with becoming fat and gaining weight. But what some don't seem to realize is that junk food literally IS junk. Junk food definitely is high in fat, but so are avocado and almonds! Since fats are a part of any balanced diet, there is not much need to worry about that - what you do need to worry about is the fact that junk food is full of junk ingredients. Did you know that your typical Macdonalds fries contain ingredients like Disodium Pyrophosphate, Polydimethylsiloxane and other weird stuff? All these chemicals are added to preserve the food color, to make it smell nice and so on. If you were making fries or burgers at home from scratch, would you really add all those chemicals? I don't think so! To be honest, I honestly don't know much about chemistry and stuff, but I definitely don't want to eat food that contains something like that. To conclude, the main idea of this point is that junk food is just really garbage and if you value your body and health, you should not be eating food like that. What I suggest is that if you really crave all this "junk food", then make it yourself at home, this way YOU can decide on the ingredients and make it a bit more healthy. Why not try a thin base whole-wheat pizza with some healthy veggie toppings? Time will not be an issue with most foods, however if you are trying to be healthier and lose weight, then time should never be an excuse to eat bad food anyway!
6) Be more active
I know a lot of you probably have the idea that you really are not a gym kind of person and might even skip this point after reading the title. Obviously regular exercise is always good and will make you feel better, however if you are one of those people who can't push themselves to do it, there are lots of easy ways to sneakily become more active during your daily life. For example, I always take the stairs instead of the elevator, I try to walk instead of taking the bus, I carry a shopping basket instead of taking the trolley. If I feel super stiff after sitting too much, I turn on music and dance alone in my room until I feel like I've unleashed my stiffness and energy, thank god no one is watching haha! All these are baby steps compared to actual exercise, but integrate them in your daily life and you will be more active than you were before. There are people at my uni that take the elevator for one floor. Come on! ONE FLOOR!
7) Swap sugar for honey
Sugar is a processed product that doesn't provide you with any health benefits. Even though my family has been using organic (brown) sugar for years (as well as organic honey bought from a neighbor beekeeper), I've decided to cut sugar out of my daily life and instead use honey as a substitute. While both sugar and honey are super high in calories, it is better to choose honey as it actually benefits you in some ways. Now, I know that there are huge debates on exactly how good honey is for you as a lot of people believe it is not healthy, but it is clear that, for those who absolutely need to use it, out of sugar and honey it is the lesser of two evils.
8) The more colors = the better!
It's important to eat a lot of vegetables as well as fruits, therefore try to have fun with your meals and make sure there are lots of different colors on your plate as each vegetable is beneficial in its own ways. There are so many variations that you can make with vegetables, trust me! In the picture below I was aiming to make a completely greenish yellow kind of meal with zucchini pasta, whole wheat pasta, peas and a sauce.
9) Pack your own lunch before school/work
A big problem in today's world is that everyone is always busy, eats bad food during work/school or starves all day until they get home. This might actually be the most difficult point in this post today, as it really can be hard to find the time to prepare a lunch while getting ready in the morning. If this is the case, I suggest doing it the night before. Might take ages at first, but if it becomes a habit, I promise you - it will take less time to prepare the food AND you will actually look forward to doing this, as it will always be fun to decide what you will have the next day.
It's very easy to develop a habit of always going to some local kebab or sandwich place every day for lunch, but it's very bad for your health AND budget. Last year at some points I would literally spend up to 50 euros for food during school, which is kind of insane if you compare that to the production cost of all that food - could add up to 3-4 euros, maybe? So pack lunches will also help you save up sooner for those amazing shoes you've had your eye on for ages ;)
Below you can see the kind of pack lunch I would take to the library for a day of studying. The box is quite big, and the fruit is cut into little pieces, so it would take me ages to finish the whole thing with a spoon, which is why it lasts me the whole day! A whole day sitting on my ass in the library, but still having fresh fruit while everyone else keeps running to the shop for extra crisps and sandwiches. Feels good! ;)
9) Have oats for breakfast
With this post, I am not trying to pressure people into thinking they need to lose weight. The post is about being healthy, and weight loss is a consequence of good and healthy eating.
Eating healthy does wonders for your body and skin, it gives you more energy and enhances your mood in general. Your body is not a waste basket. One could even ask: "Do you really hate yourself that much that you will only feed your body bad food?" I read somewhere about the human body being compared to a battery operated machine, batteries in this case meaning food. If you put bad batteries in your machine, it will perform badly, just like your body will after eating bad food.
My tips are super simple. They don't require much additional effort to your daily life. It is simply about changing your lifestyle. Slowly but gradually.
1) Eat in moderation, stop when satisfied
When having a meal, stop eating as soon as you feel satisfied, rather than when you feel so full that your stomach might burst. Extremities are never good, regardless if you are feeling super full or starving. Besides, if you feel satisfied after eating X amount of food, why keep eating? Something I used to do, especially when I ate in restaurants, was trying to eat ALL of the food on my plate, because I paid for it and it's a special occasion, and so on. I have now realized that all that doesn't matter. Restaurants have a default size for each meal so that this meal would work for everyone - big men or small children, which doesn't automatically mean that you need to finish it all off. Your health comes at a higher value than money wasted on food. It can be difficult at first, but you will get used to it and after a while, I swear, you will hate feeling too full and avoid it at all costs! Something I do to help me eat in moderation is cut my food into small pieces, in that way it takes me longer to eat it all. You might notice this in my fruit pictures below.
2) Eat dinner from a small plate
This kind of ties in with my first point, to eat in moderation. No one ever said you need to eat from a large plate. It is just something that has become an acceptable norm in society and somehow everyone thinks you should have dinner from large plates. I'm not sure how it has come to this, whether it was the impact of movies or TV food adverts or whatnot. Anyway - large plates create the illusion that they are half empty, psychologically making you think want to eat more, even if you don't necessarily need another portion. Let me demonstrate with the picture below! Both plates have the same amount of food on them (I tried my best :P). If you will eat from the large plate, you are likely to feel like you haven't eaten so much, however if you eat from the small plate, you will normally feel quite full and satisfied.
3) Drinks that are often misconceived as healthy
... but are actually not. At all. Some of them are super obvious, although I still see people drinking Diet Coke and saying that they are on a healthy diet. If we put aside all the sugar and chemicals that have been added to Coke, at least think of all the side-effects of drinking such a bad drink. Most of these drinks are marketed as healthy, but what actually happens, is that a lot of companies try to play on those "healthy" people that don't really read the ingredients. ALL the above drinks have so much sugar and chemicals in them that you could as well go pig out at Macdonalds instead (please don't, though). Even Innocent smoothies are not good for you, as all the natural fibers are stripped off from the fruit they use and the smoothie is only left with sugar and lots of calories. Also, they are definitely not completely natural as they stay on the shop shelves for days or even weeks without rotting away. Try to make a natural smoothie at home and see how long it stays decent looking/tasting. I give it a day or two! Did I mention that most of the above drink companies are owned by Coca Cola (including Innocent)?
Some other drinks that I would recommend skipping are cow milk (I don't want to tell why you should stop drinking milk as it will give me loads and loads of hate, so please do some research on it yourself) and juice made from concentrate.
If you really are serious about being healthy and losing weight, drinks you would ideally consume are water (!!!), lots of green or mint tea and natural juices (No Tropicana! Only home-made juices).
4) Sweet cravings - healthy snacks
And no, healthy snacks are usually not what you can find at supermarkets labelled as a "healthy snack". It is perfectly normal to have a sweet tooth and crave sweet things after your meal, or even all day long (like me, haha). I ALWAYS have desert after eating, doesn't matter whether it's during breakfast, lunch or dinner time. The catch is that my desert is fruit. And lots of it. The more colors, the better! It tastes amazing and with time you will forget all about candy and stuff. If you have a hard time getting over candy cravings, try to read the ingredients at the back and it might put you off for life. Pork gelatin in your typical Haribo sweets? No thanks. Gelatin is literally made of leftover animal parts at factories, such as bones, skin and so on. That's freaking disgusting, if you ask me.
Fruit is very rich in nutrients and there are millions of reasons why it's beneficial for you. Additionally, a full bowl of fruit (like in the 3 photos below) is so filling that it can be a meal alone. I usually have something like this at night when I'm hungry but it's too late for a cooked meal. Doesn't it look good?
5) Skip junk food
I know this is super-duper obvious. However it is an important part of this post! Now, most people usually associate the term "junk food" with becoming fat and gaining weight. But what some don't seem to realize is that junk food literally IS junk. Junk food definitely is high in fat, but so are avocado and almonds! Since fats are a part of any balanced diet, there is not much need to worry about that - what you do need to worry about is the fact that junk food is full of junk ingredients. Did you know that your typical Macdonalds fries contain ingredients like Disodium Pyrophosphate, Polydimethylsiloxane and other weird stuff? All these chemicals are added to preserve the food color, to make it smell nice and so on. If you were making fries or burgers at home from scratch, would you really add all those chemicals? I don't think so! To be honest, I honestly don't know much about chemistry and stuff, but I definitely don't want to eat food that contains something like that. To conclude, the main idea of this point is that junk food is just really garbage and if you value your body and health, you should not be eating food like that. What I suggest is that if you really crave all this "junk food", then make it yourself at home, this way YOU can decide on the ingredients and make it a bit more healthy. Why not try a thin base whole-wheat pizza with some healthy veggie toppings? Time will not be an issue with most foods, however if you are trying to be healthier and lose weight, then time should never be an excuse to eat bad food anyway!
6) Be more active
I know a lot of you probably have the idea that you really are not a gym kind of person and might even skip this point after reading the title. Obviously regular exercise is always good and will make you feel better, however if you are one of those people who can't push themselves to do it, there are lots of easy ways to sneakily become more active during your daily life. For example, I always take the stairs instead of the elevator, I try to walk instead of taking the bus, I carry a shopping basket instead of taking the trolley. If I feel super stiff after sitting too much, I turn on music and dance alone in my room until I feel like I've unleashed my stiffness and energy, thank god no one is watching haha! All these are baby steps compared to actual exercise, but integrate them in your daily life and you will be more active than you were before. There are people at my uni that take the elevator for one floor. Come on! ONE FLOOR!
7) Swap sugar for honey
Sugar is a processed product that doesn't provide you with any health benefits. Even though my family has been using organic (brown) sugar for years (as well as organic honey bought from a neighbor beekeeper), I've decided to cut sugar out of my daily life and instead use honey as a substitute. While both sugar and honey are super high in calories, it is better to choose honey as it actually benefits you in some ways. Now, I know that there are huge debates on exactly how good honey is for you as a lot of people believe it is not healthy, but it is clear that, for those who absolutely need to use it, out of sugar and honey it is the lesser of two evils.
8) The more colors = the better!
It's important to eat a lot of vegetables as well as fruits, therefore try to have fun with your meals and make sure there are lots of different colors on your plate as each vegetable is beneficial in its own ways. There are so many variations that you can make with vegetables, trust me! In the picture below I was aiming to make a completely greenish yellow kind of meal with zucchini pasta, whole wheat pasta, peas and a sauce.
9) Pack your own lunch before school/work
A big problem in today's world is that everyone is always busy, eats bad food during work/school or starves all day until they get home. This might actually be the most difficult point in this post today, as it really can be hard to find the time to prepare a lunch while getting ready in the morning. If this is the case, I suggest doing it the night before. Might take ages at first, but if it becomes a habit, I promise you - it will take less time to prepare the food AND you will actually look forward to doing this, as it will always be fun to decide what you will have the next day.
It's very easy to develop a habit of always going to some local kebab or sandwich place every day for lunch, but it's very bad for your health AND budget. Last year at some points I would literally spend up to 50 euros for food during school, which is kind of insane if you compare that to the production cost of all that food - could add up to 3-4 euros, maybe? So pack lunches will also help you save up sooner for those amazing shoes you've had your eye on for ages ;)
Below you can see the kind of pack lunch I would take to the library for a day of studying. The box is quite big, and the fruit is cut into little pieces, so it would take me ages to finish the whole thing with a spoon, which is why it lasts me the whole day! A whole day sitting on my ass in the library, but still having fresh fruit while everyone else keeps running to the shop for extra crisps and sandwiches. Feels good! ;)
9) Have oats for breakfast
I've recently started this habit and now every morning I am so excited for breakfast! Not only do oats have numerous health benefits (do some research and you'll be surprised!), they are also very good for weight loss as they make you feel SUPER full for SUPER long. Oats alone might taste a little bit boring, so I always add lots of berries, and in a way it becomes a desert, yum! The picture below does not represent my breakfast in the best way as that morning I only had frozen berries, but check this one that I posted on my instagram, so yummy!
10) Lifestyle, not diet
Overall, I want to add that I do eat bad food sometimes, and I mean really bad food. It's difficult to stop the habit when you have been doing that for all your life. The thing you need to remember is that one processed burger won't kill you, just like a few healthy meals won't make you healthy. It's about changing your lifestyle. Forget all about diets, honestly I don't even know who invented those, because they are absolutely useless.. I mean - eat a certain way for a week or two and then go back to your old habits, why even try if all the weight will come back anyway? If you want to constantly feel and look good (something a diet will not provide you with!) you need to change your lifestyle. Start slow, but with a goal, and you will get there. I used to be junk food obsessed, was a total couch potato and couldn't even walk up the stairs without gasping for air, but as soon as I started my interest in becoming healthier, it is literally on my mind all the time and I try to teach all my friends to do the same, haha. Hopefully they're not too annoyed with me!
It was quite difficult for me to step out of my comfort zone as this is really not the kind of articles I usually post, and I am aware that I will probably get critisized for it, but if I helped at least one person, then it was worth it. I hope you guys enjoyed this post! ♥
