Eating healthy is easier than you think and gets easier the longer you do it. Here’s 7 tips to make eating healthy easier for you!

1) Shop at the same time each week: It’s hard to eat healthy foods if you don’t have them available in your house. Dedicating a set time once or twice per week to shop for food is the best way to ensure this happens. Write it in your diary, the hour you spend shopping each week is the most important time of the week for your health!! Planning your meals in advance and using this to formulate a shopping list is crucial. Allow your shopping list to  evolve over time as you tune in to how much and what  food you need each week.

2) Cook twice as much as you need: If it’s just you and your partner, cook for 4 and serve up two serves to be enjoyed straight away and put 2 serves in a container to be re heated on a night when you are more pressed for time. I find this works great for stews, soups, casseroles and curries that don’t lose moisture on re heating.

3) Harness the power of the container: Arm yourself with a fleet of trusty containers of various shapes and sizes for snacks. These will enable you to take your healthy eating anywhere and everywhere. I’m a sport tragic and for Swans home games my wife and I bring a monster container for our trusty rocket, bacon, chicken, pine nut and sweet potato salad, complete with a little jar of salad dressing and 2 forks! There’s a container for every occasion. Small ones for snacks, bigger ones for dinners to re heat, some jars for salad dressings and sauces.

4) Get breakfast ready the night before: Getting everything laid out for breakfast is a great way to ensure you have it. You’ve already invested some time in getting out what you need so when you stumble out of bed the thought to skip breakfast doesn’t even cross your mind. I wake up at 5am and usually have scrambled eggs and some berries with almond flakes and coconut milk. Before I go to bed, I take my frozen berries out of the freezer and put them in a bowl to defrost over night. I have the almond flakes next to them , the spoon in the bowl, the pan on the hotplate and the mixing bowl, plate, whisk, and spatular all out and ready to go. All I have to do in the morning is turn the heat up and crack the eggs and I’m away, 5 minutes later I’m eating my cooked brekky!

5) Establish some easy ‘go to’ meals: Organisation is the key but sometimes you will get caught out. Having a quick, easy go to meal that’s quick an easy is perfect for these instances. These are the nights where take away food suddenly seems like a great idea. On nights like this ease and convenience is usually the priority. I like to keep some frozen vege’s and some minute steaks in the freezer. On a night where somethings come up and time is precious I can throw the vege’s in the microwave and the minute steak on the pan and 5 minutes later I’m eating a health dinner.

6) Use a slow cooker or crock pot: Having a hot juicy dinner that melts in your mouth without doing any prep  immediately before hand is a luxury that a slow cooker / crok pot provides! This is a Sunday favourite for me. I love to make a cooked breakfast on Sunday morning and at the same time throw a bunch of ingredients into the slow cooker to be enjoyed  8 or 10 hours later. I can then enjoy my Sunday and come home to a cooked meal. A nice little bonus cooking this way is that the cuts of meat that taste best are usually the cheapest too!

7) When all else fails don’t let your food fail with it: Make your nutrition the priority in your life it deserves to be. At the end of the day your nutrition should not only be enjoyable, but it’s one of the most important things in your life for your health, fitness, well being and of course your waistline. So while eating perfection 100% of the time shouldn’t be anyone’s goal,  when life throws some curve balls at you and things get tough and time gets precious remember to love yourself first and give your body the excellent healthy food it deserves to stay healthy lean and firing on all cylinders.