How to Combat Healthy Eating Boredom

how-to-combat-boredom

A friend and I were just discussing today one of the main reasons why people tend to fall off the healthy eating wagon: boredom. “If I have to eat a salad one more time, I’d rather not eat,” she said.  I know exactly how she feels.  Ironically, I brought a salad for lunch today too. I enjoyed it though.

A lot of times when we’re dieting or trying to change our eating patterns, we fall into a rut.  We go with the tried and true and forget that we need to be happy too. For those of you who know exactly what I mean, I have good news for you: healthy eating doesn’t have to be boring or repetitive or joyless.  In fact, it shouldn’t be.  

You don’t have to have salad for lunch five days a week to lose weight or maintain your figure and you certainly don’t have to eat the same old salad everyday.  You should however, eat lots of veggies (see my post on easy ways to get 7 vegetable servings a day) and supplement that with whole grains, legumes and lean sources of protein.

When you look at it from a nutritional perspective, you realize that the lunch possibilities are endless. You could, for example, have one of a myriad of healthy recipes for lunch and either add a cup of cooked veggies on the side (i.e. a WeightWatchers recipe for Turkey Chili with a side of broccoli), or incorporate the veggies into the meal (i.e. a veggie stir fry with 4-5 ounces of shrimp or beef or chicken). You could have a wrap with low fat deli meat, a healthy condiment or spread, and lots of veggies like spinach and tomatoes.  You could have a bowl of vegetable or lentil or black bean soup and add some organic Cajun spiced turkey sausage. You could even have a radically different salad every day of the week. Are you hungry yet? Stay tuned for some new posts, recipes and meal ideas designed to beat back boredom.

Peace