It's not a mystery that for some, "healthy meals" can be quite boring. But, why? Well, some people have the misconception that a healthy meal consists in boiled broccoli, chicken breast and sweet potato only. And I say sweet potatoes because I don't know for what reason people started being afraid of potatoes, sweet potatoes are just a variety of potatoes. Just to make it clear, you can eat potatoes if you want! Anyway, healthy meals can be more fun and tasty than that and that's why I am doing this article.
There are so many ways to make healthy and delicious meals (check out my eBook "Deliciously Healthy" to discover great recipes and a bunch of information to boost your eating habits), before I give you a few tips to do so, I would like to help you work on your mindset a bit. Big transformations start in our mind and then we should proceed with the rest. If you understand what it takes in order to achieve want you want, you will embrace every step of the way with a positive perspective and the journey becomes more enjoyable. On the contrary, if you don't have an idea of what it takes or the possible challenges you might face, you could turn all the experience into a completely nightmare. So, make sure that you: ask yourself why, face your current situation and analyse the possible consequences if you don't make this change, do some research about the topic, set a plan and go for it!
Now, let's give you what you came for!
6 Tips to make your healthy meals more exciting
1. Keep it simple when shopping for ingredients: Make sure you don't overwhelm yourself with complicated meat cuts and ingredients you don't know how to cook or use. Stick with the ones you already know and learn new ways of cooking them.
2. Use spices and herbs: When it comes to making your foods more tasty, spices and herbs play a huge role. You can turn a plain meal into an aromatic and flavouring experience by adding one of two different herbs or spices to it. Spices can often enhance the flavour of different foods, for example: nutmeg can enhance the flavour of potatoes, black pepper can enhance the flavour of red meats, paprika can enhance the flavour or tomato sauces, cumin can be used to enhance the flavour of lentils, and so on. The best thing? You can put spices and herbs in almost everything!
3. Use dressings: Bottled dressings are a major issued when it comes to having a healthy diet because they often are high in sodium, sugar and fat, but if you make yours at home you can save money and calories, how good is that?. A dressing I love to use for my salads is a yogurt dressing that I make with 1 Table spoon of olive oil, 1/2 lemon juice, 1/4 avocado, 2 Table spoons of water and 2 Table spoons of yogurt, I blend everything in the mixer and the keep it in my fridge. There are also artisan bottled dressing options that you can buy from the supermarket, make sure to read the label before you buy it. Be really mindful when using dressings in your meals, we are talking about big amount of hidden calories in here.
4. Use different cooking methods: Try cooking your meats, vegetables and carbohydrates in different ways, you will easily get bored of them if you always cook them in the same way.
5. Look for easy recipes: A good way to be more playful with your meals is to find recipes that you like, they don't have to be complex, I am pretty sure you are able to find really delicious recipes that don't take more than 10 minutes to make.
6. Find a meal provider service: I know cooking for every day of the week can be quite hard, but you don't have to do everything by yourself. Nowadays, there plenty of ready meal services that you can use, for example: My muscle chef, Hello fresh, Youfoodz, just to name a few. You can prep meal for 3 days of the week and the other days you can just rely on any of these services. It's a great way to keep healthy eating habits while enjoying tasty meals.
Remember, enjoying food is not only about the flavour but the impact that each nutrient brings to your body.