Well, the best way for you to stop is to start meal planning. The idea of it might seem impossible to us at first, but meal planning is actually really practical. The most common myth with meal planning is that is actually really expensive, but it is actually quite the opposite. When you are meal planning, you know exactly what you need to buy at the grocery store, so you cannot pick extra items or any unhealthy items, and this actually ends up saving you money, and you come back from the grocery store with exactly what you need and no extra snacks that might lead to unhealthy eating.
If the idea of planning your meals for a week or two weeks in advance sounds too overwhelming, you can start out small, and just plan your meals for the next two or three days. This will allow you to experiment and familiarize yourself with meal planning, and help you get ready for longer meal plans. The first thing you need to do is recognize how you eat throughout the day. So, this means figuring out whether you only eat two or three proper meals a day, whether you eat a number of small meals throughout the day, or whether you like to include snacks between certain meals throughout the day. You can easily identify your eating habits by replaying what you ate the last two or three days, this will help you determine how you eat so that you can plan your meals accordingly, because you cannot force your body to eat at a schedule it is not accustomed to, and doing that will only cause you do not want to stick to the meal plan. You can check out ActivEats in case you still find yourself in a rut and unable to come up with a nutritious and filling meal plan.
The next step of the meal plan is to actually write down what you will be eating. So, you need to write down what you will be eating each meal, and what you will be having each snack. This may sound a little strict, but it is actually a great practice in discipline and in being healthy. So, you can write down that you will have an egg for breakfast with one slice of buttered toast along with a glass of coffee, tea or orange juice. You can then put in a snack between breakfast and lunch like an apple or a bowl of mixed nuts, and then move onto lunch where you can have a deli meat sandwich or a salad where you will list down all of the things that you will add in it, and you can then put in tea and a health bar or some other snack for the time between lunch and dinner, and then during dinner you can have vegetables and grilled fish and so on. This is a very basic template of what a meal plan should look like, of course, if you happen to have different eating habits, and if you happen to work out, then you will also need to include what you will be eating before and after your workout as well. The best thing you can do is to be as thorough and detailed as possible when you are creating your meal plan because this will help you while you are shopping, and also when you are in the process of making your meal. So, instead of just writing grilled fish, also write down what kind of marinade you will be using to grill the fish, so you can write down Greek grilled fish, and your marinade ingredients can be listed as olive oil, salt, pepper, olives, and so on. This way things become even easier for you while you are shopping and cooking your meals.
You want to make sure that your meal plan covers all of your basic dietary requirements or else you will end up finding yourself feeling weak or hungry. So, you want to make sure that your meal plan has lots of protein, vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats and carbohydrates as well. You should also try to incorporate healthier sugars in your meal plan as well, so you can prepare your own health bars or buy health bars that are sweetened naturally with ingredients like honey and dates and so on. This way you have sugar in your system as well and are not easily tempted by unhealthy sweet options around you.
Of course, it is not going to be easy to stick to your meal plan at first, and it can be really exhausting having to create your own meals every single time, and this is where you can start incorporating meal prepping in your plan as well so that you do not have to cook every single day for every meal, or you can just have the marinade and vegetables prepped and packed away, and all you have to do is to cook them in order to get a meal ready. Regardless, meal planning is the best way to ensure that you have a healthy diet where you are only eating healthy nutrients are not consistently eating junk food and unhealthy meals all of the time. It is quite honestly the best thing you can do to start your journey towards a healthier you and have a better relationship with food and your body.
