How To Fight Stress With Healthy Eating

Stress is such a common feature of modern day life, isn’t it? The sad reality is that whenever we get too busy or stressed, we all tend to make poor food choices that will actually increase stress and cause other problems.  To get the most of your healthy eating and avoid stress, follow these simple tips.

One: Learn To Prepare Foods

We start this list off with something unpopular in our modern world of instant gratification. But you should learn about how to prepare foods because it influences the quality of food that goes into your system. Instead of deep frying, try grilling, stir frying, microwaving, baking, and even boiling.  You should also try fresh or even dried herbs and spices to add flavour to your food.  Before you eat any type of meat, be sure to trim the fat and skin off of it.

Two: Don’t Think About Diets Too Much

I know I tend to harp on this point in this blog a little too much. But it is worth repeating. In theory, there are no good foods or any bad foods.  All food can be a part of a healthy diet when eaten in moderation.  You don’t need to buy any low carb, fat free, or even diet foods, as these foods normally have lots of other added ingredients to replace the carbohydrates or fat. Keep it simple.

Three: Always Eat Breakfast

Oooo…. It’s controversial, but let’s go with it. Even though you may think you aren’t hungry, you should still eat something.  Skipping breakfast makes it harder to maintain the proper blood and sugar levels during the day, so you should always eat something in the mornings. Furthermore, when you skip meals and get hungry, you’re more than likely to choose foods that aren’t very good for you.

Four: Bring Lunch To Work

Although a lot of people prefer to eat fast food for lunch or go to the cafeteria, you can save a lot of money (unless you live in Singapore) and actually eat healthier if you take a few minutes and pack lunch at home.  Even if you only do this a few times a week, you’ll see a much better improvement over eating out. After all, you have less control over food that you buy.

Five: Choose Healthier Snacks

Snacks matter! Keeping some protein rich snacks in your car, office, or pocket book will help you avoid blood sugar level dips, the accompanying mood swings and fatigue.  Trail mix, granola bars, and energy bars all have the nutrients you need. If you like to munch when you’re stressed out, replace chips or other non-healthy foods with carrot sticks, celery sticks, or even sunflower seeds.

Six: Manage Your Home Stock

While you might think stress comes from the office, there can be things at home that you can do. As important as it is to get the bad food out of your house, it’s even more important to get the good food in!  The best way to do this is to plan a menu of healthy meals at snacks at the beginning of the week, list the ingredients you need, and then go shop for it.  This way, you’ll know what you want when you need it and you won’t have to stress over what to eat.

Seven: Beware of Sugar Overload

Firstly, drinks that contain sugar are a major source of empty energy.  What this means is that the drinks contain a lot of energy that your body may not need, and it doesn’t contain any vitamins or minerals.  If you plan to drink sugary drinks, don’t go overboard – limit yourself to 1 a day.

There we go. Stress is a part of modern day life, but you can control the variable of what you put inside your body. It will not get rid of all your stress, but you can bet it will help reduce it.

Check these out too:

 

---

Also published on Medium.