Your Hectic Lifestyle Should Not Prevent You from Eating Well: Six Tips to Maintaining a Healthy Diet When You Are Short On Time

If you ask individuals who don’t eat particularly healthily and whose diet suffers why this is the case, they will most often cite a lack of time to prepare or plan nutritious and wholesome meals due to their busy lifestyles. 

Other reasons given for an inability to maintain a healthy diet come from those who don’t consider themselves very good in the kitchen, while some just don’t see food as much more than fuel to keep them going.

As excuses go, these are all pretty valid and are common issues, but it is worth noting that in 2023 there are more options and choices out there than you might at first imagine. 

Here are seven tips that should help you change the way you think about your approach to meal times, which should hopefully aid the pursuit of a healthier and more nutritious diet.

Plan Your Weekly Shop

Often poor nutritional choices are the result of poor preparation. How many times have you got home from a long day in the office and found that the only items in your kitchen are those which will end up producing a meal that offers little to no dietary value? 

Clearly, if you are working all hours of the day and night, shopping can be hard to manage, and you may well end up getting a few things here and there, leading inevitably to a less budgetarily efficient approach at the same time.

Why not plan things better? Set aside half an hour, sit down and work out what you would like to eat over the coming week, make a list and buy all the goods you need. This may sound like a given, but you’d be surprised at how few of us shop in such a detailed manner. 

Cook Your Own Meals

Okay, don’t panic. Yes, we know you are busy, but cooking your own dinner, and no, we don’t mean taking a ready-made meal and placing it in the microwave, doesn’t need to be a big song and dance, and great healthy meals can be prepped, cooked and plated within 30 mins or so.

This leads directly from our last point. If you plan your weekly shopping, you can also build up a selection of dishes that you can cook for yourself. One common factor in relation to eating more healthily is that you tend to be far more aware and conscious about what you put in your body when it is you yourself who is putting the meal together. 

Meal Delivery Kits

If you want to eat better, and perhaps even enjoy a more varied selection of styles of food, then meal delivery kits may be a wise avenue to take. Meal delivery kits come in different types, but essentially the idea is that you can have an array of meals delivered, albeit in compartmentalized sections, along with easy-to-understand and action instructions, which you then put together as and when you need them.

One of the most popular and tasty options in this area is My Patriot Supply, and they are proof that a meal delivery kit provider can offer a tremendous amount of variety at an affordable price. 

There are many upsides to meal delivery kits. Firstly these can help kickstart a better, more confident approach in the kitchen, as many of these kits require a little bit of cooking and prepping. Secondly, you can try out whole new niches and styles of food and, in doing so, freshen up your palette. Thirdly, these can be a very cost-effective way to do your weekly shopping, mainly because these kits come with the right portions, and nothing gets wasted.

Get the Latest Kitchen Gadgets and Make Sure You are Prepared

Another barrier that can hold you back is being unprepared in the kitchen. If you are not adequately stocked in terms of utensils, tools, and appliances, then the idea of putting a meal together may not be very appealing.

However, the opposite is true. In other words, just having all the right equipment can be all the incentive you need to get handier in the kitchen. This need not mean spending vast sums and then finding out you are, in fact, not chef material; it might just be a case of having a decent amount of silverware and a good range of pots and pans. 

The point is the more welcoming your kitchen is, the more likely you are going to want to spend time there. 

Try to Cook Simple Meals First

It is commonly the case that those who are looking to become more effective in the kitchen often overstretch themselves and then give up. So if you are not all that experienced in putting together a meal for yourself, then start slowly. 

Pick out one or two dishes that are relatively straightforward. It helps if these are dishes you personally enjoy, and if they are healthy, that’s also a bonus. Then try to perfect them, and in doing so, you will find yourself more ready to take on a stiffer challenge. Approach this on a step-by-step basis.

An Occasional Take-Out Meal Is More Than Acceptable

The take-out meal option should not be entirely removed from the table. So don’t feel guilty if you occasionally just don’t have the energy to cook for yourself; just try to make sure it is not a regular occurrence. Perhaps set boundaries, and maybe start with one take-out meal every two weeks. 

The good news is that the take-out service industry has also thrived in the post-COVID era, and that means you can make sure that what you order is at least relatively healthy.