Portion control, eating smaller meals more often, and cutting out the empty calories is a great start toward improving your daily diet habits. Incorporating exercises multiple times a week is necessary for further improvements along with these tips. Consistency is key. Yes, it may take some time to find a routine that is right with you and coordinates with your schedule, but this is your wellbeing we are talking about. If getting up an hour earlier to cook your meals for the day is necessary, do it. You can’t put a price on not only feeling good but feeling good about yourself. Your future summer self will thank you.
3. Cut out the empty calories: What do I consider empty calories? Anything that we could eat/drink a lot of without truly being satisfied and doesn’t have much nutritional value. The biggest example of empty calories would be soda or what I call pop. Everyone drinks pop, but have you ever stopped and thought about what you’re drinking? We’ve all heard about the harmfulness of carbonation and how much sugar pop has, but I want to look at it from a caloric perspective. A 12oz can of Coke has 140 calories in it. Say a person has one can of coke for both lunch and dinner and maybe one while he’s relaxing. That is 420 calories a day from just a drink. A pound of fat has approximately 3,500 calories. If we would replace pop with water, that could be a deficit of almost 3,000 calories a week for some of us, which almost equates to losing 1lb of fat a week. Little changes like that can make a big difference.
(2. cont'd) In between our main breakfast, lunch and dinner courses, we could have little snacks like granola, a protein bar or shake, peanuts/walnuts, fruits, or anything that is nutrient dense (healthy) and not packed with sugar or sodium.