10 Staying power tips for a healthy diet

A permanently healthy diet is not only the best prevention against diseases, it also helps you to feel good and to keep your weight. With these ten tips, it’s sure to work.

1. Keep a record

Write down your goals before changing your diet and make a contract with yourself to reach your goal. In difficult times, this contract helps immensely to remind you of the goal. With a food diary you can record which foods have had a particularly good or bad effect on your well-being. You can then eliminate them or eat them more often. By the way, food diaries are also available as an app with a built-in scanner for recording food items. A good recommendation is the free Yazio.

2. (Small) exceptions prove the rule

You don’t have to stick obsessively to your self-imposed dietary rules. If you eat healthy and wholesome food on nine days, it is no drama to eat something less healthy on the tenth day. This may not be so good for the body, but it is even more so for the head. It’s important that you record the rule breaking in your food diary. Also, give some thought to the product and whether there might be a way to make it yourself with healthier ingredients. A pizza made of wholemeal dough, topped with fresh vegetables beats a frozen pizza for example by worlds!

3. Get rid of your scale

Looking at the scale is a kind of reward, especially when dieting. But even without dieting many check their weight regularly on the scale to adjust the diet. What the scale doesn’t take into account: With diets, the weight loss will eventually slow down. This frustrates many. Also, fluidity fluctuates. In women the cycle additionally influences the weight. Plus: if you exercise more, muscle mass will increase and weight will actually increase.

4. Weekly market instead of supermarket

Eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables is part of a healthy diet. You can get this also in the supermarket, but the visit to the weekly market is worth much more! Above all, regional producers who can tell you about how their products are made and give you tips on how to prepare them are worth their weight in gold. This will motivate you not only when you’re preparing, but also for your next shopping trip.

5. Anticipation thanks to seasonal calendars

Get a seasonal calendar for fruits and vegetables. With this one, you can see what’s in season and fresh from the field instead of the greenhouse. Also, a seasonal calendar is a good inspiration for the daily "What do I eat today?"?" question. Plus, with a calendar, you’ll see early on when your favorite vegetable or fruit is finally available again, fresh and not imported. So you can look forward to it for several weeks! You can find a comprehensive seasonal calendar, for example, at the Environmental Advisory Service.

6. Cook together

An evening of cooking together is a wonderful opportunity to get together with friends again. Above all, cooking together is a wonderful source for discovering new foods and ways of preparing them. To make organization work better, you can divide the menu among the cooks: Salad, main course and dessert. This way, everyone can take care of a recipe and the ingredients for their dish and share their knowledge afterwards.

7. Change your diet in tandem

You can use a similar principle to cooking when switching to healthier food, but permanently. Find a nutrition partner. Together with a good friend, boyfriend or partner, it’s easier to lose weight. You can give each other tips or swap new, unfamiliar foods. This increases diversity without having to make bulk purchases.

8. Bake it yourself

A healthy diet doesn’t mean you have to give up delicious sweets. However, you should avoid ready-made from the freezer or from bakery chains, because that often contains many additives. Buy from a whole foods bakery instead. Or better yet, try your hand at baking for yourself! You can experiment around and use whole wheat flour instead of wheat flour or agave syrup instead of sugar, for example. What better reward can there be than to put a delicious piece of homemade fruitcake on the plate of your guests at the weekend?

9. Water, water, water ..

Make water a regular part of your diet. Drink a warm glass of water with the juice of half a lemon right after you get up in the morning. The water boosts bodily functions and the lemon contains many important ingredients. Drinking a lot during the day is a good way to fight hunger pangs. It’s best to use non-carbonated water at room temperature, the body tolerates it best. By drinking lots of water, you can also easily kick the habit of less healthy drinks like coffee, milk and especially juice and sodas. However, you do not have to renounce here: simply dilute sweet drinks increasingly with water.

10. Take your time

Avoid changing your diet from one day to the next. Here’s how to give your body, as well as your shopping habits, enough time to adjust to your new diet. Learn new foods and new ways to prepare them. Slowly leave the old diet behind. Try a lot of things and discover how good alternatives can be.