10 tips to eat better (and easy tricks to make it happen)

Tips & Tricks

Have you already chosen your New Year resolutions? If eating better is at the top of your priorities, here is a list of 10 tips that have been proven time and time again, and are also nutritionist-approved. Lets start the year on the right foot!

1. Use your intuition

   Instead of starting a new diet, start by listening to your body and not your head. Intuitive eating can help us lose weight (if that is our objective), but it’ll be even more helpful in noticing the difference between actually being hungry or just wanting to eat. From now on, take the time to really taste ingredients, respect your body’s signals telling you that you’re full, and add in some exercise for the pleasure of moving rather than for the goal of losing weight.

2. Fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables

   An alarming realization is that 60% of us eat less than 5 portions of fruits and veggies a day! We should not underestimate the power of vegetables. The simple gesture of filling half your plate with these can help prevent many diseases. To succeed at this, take a few minutes to clean and cut them when you get home from the grocery. This way, they’ll be ready to eat and to cook when the moment comes.

3. No to the ultra transformation of produce

   Science is unequivocal: the higher the percentage of calorie-intake coming for ultra-transformed ingredients, the more the overall quality of our diet is diminished. Ultra-transformed foods (ex: sugary drinks, cookies, baked goods, cakes, snacks) are usually very rich in calories, sugars, bad fats, and salt. When possible, we should always choose untransformed ingredients (dried fruits, nut mixes, cheese, milk), and products that have a short list of ingredients (usually less than 5).

4. Get to work

   Cooking means giving our diet the place it deserves. When we cook, we become less dependent on restaurants and transformed products. Additionally, fresh foods will become a staple of your everyday diet. Cooking means creating memories, an occasion to bring together the entire family that also entails saving a lot of money annually. Everyone to your pots and pans!

5. We eat locally

   Apple, cranberries, and carrots: why goes elsewhere when so many products are available in Quebec? Eating local means eater fresher and better quality products with a better taster and higher nutritional value. When eating fruits and vegetables that are in season, we reap an additional bonus: they are usually less expensive. Feel like joining the movement? All you need to do is either get interested in where the source of products you choose at your local grocery, or sign up for to get local product baskets delivered straight to your door.

6. We choose the right moments to drink juice

   When you would really want a glass of juice, it is important to choose a product that is 100% pure, made from concentrate or not. Most importantly, the juice needs to have no added sugar. We are therefore sure that the product is made solely from fruit juice to which we may have added water. In terms of daily hydration, we have a definite preference for water, and limit our consumption of juice for specific moments like before training.

7. Nourish your microbiota

   Microbiota is a subject that will often be discussed in 2017, and this is with reason. Scientific are extremely interested in the thousands of bacteria that populate our digestive tube. They would have the power to influence our immune system and would protect us against multiple diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson, and Alzheimer. To promote their presence in our system, we can add live or fermented products to our diet such as yogurt, miso, Jerusalem artichoke, kefir, or kombucha tea.

8. Eat a bit of everything

   Eating a bit of everything entails embracing variety and great culinary discoveries. It also is a simple way to allow us to fulfill, without keeping track, all of our nutritional needs in a day.

9. Planning better to waste less

   Do you regularly throw out food that has been forgotten in the bottom of the fridge? It may not show, but we waste about 4000$ of food yearly. A solution to all this waste is planning your meals a week in advance. This means we can buy only the food needed, manage the leftovers, and limit our last minutes visits to the restaurants and unplanned junk food meals. Since we’ve thought of everything, you can download a meal-planning list here and check out our article on how to best clean your fridge.

10. Become a flexitarian

    Flexitarisme is new culinary trend that entails considerably reducing one’s meat consumption by replacing it with ingredients of vegetable origin such as vegetables and meat substitutes (soya, legumes). This is a great compromise that increases our intake of dietary fibers, reduces our risk for chronic diseases, lowers the cost of our groceries, and helps us play a small part in the well being of the planet.