5 Nutritional Hacks To Boost Your Health
There are blogs upon blogs upon blogs upon blogs out there talking about what you should and shouldn’t eat, when you should and shouldn’t eat, the secret formula to the perfect healthy existence and the downright criminal choices that will ruin your chances of becoming a demi-God.
We’re not interested in feeding you more of the same (‘scuse the pun) and, rather, want to highlight some simple tips you can apply to your daily food routine to level up on your health.
1. They talk about the prep, but they don’t mention the snacks?
As the ol’ saying goes – failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Food preparation is key to making sure that you get a good meal, packed with the macro nutrients you need, that’s ready and available for you to munch when you get a break in your day. Some plan for the week, prepping 7 days worth of food in one go. Some prep for a few days. Some simply get prepping for the next day last thing before bed the night before. Nowadays, you can easily buy cheap prep boxes online so that you get the perfect portion for one meal. What a time to be alive, hey? What people often forget to prepare for is their snack intake. They’ll have put together some blinding breakfasts, protein packed lunches, and mutlicoloured vegetable-i-fied dinners, and totally neglected the fact that they know come 3pm they’ll get a snack craving. This is when a guilty trip to the office biscuit tin is most likely to happen, when the muffins in Starbucks look doubly appealing, or tomorrow’s prepped lunch gets wolfed down early. So don’t forget to plan for your snacks! The Snacks maketh the man.
2. Make a habit of cooking enough for a small family
This might seem like an anti-tip, because every blog out there will tell you to strictly portion out every meal to tight specifications. But we’re just rebellious like that. If you make a habit of making extra food every time you cook, you’re simply prepping for the next day without really having to think about it. Make double your lunch and refrigerate it. Make double your dinners and pop one in the freezer for a rainy day. You can still portion to perfection if you run a tight ship, but it just makes you more like to commit to point 1.
3. Spice up your life by infusing your water
Staying hydrated is a basic human need, and will be promoted on every bit of health advice you can find out there, from GPs to Nutritionists, to Fitness Professionals. But some people really do find it hard to be inspired to drink the required amount. It’s an especially hard habit to get into if you’ve grown up drinking a lot of squash, juice or carbonated drinks. Thankfully, you can now buy infuser bottles at most supermarkets (and even pound shops) that will allow you get some natural flavours into your water. You could chuck anything in there, from berries, to watermelon, to fresh mint. And you can shake it up on the daily for a bit of variation. After all, variety is the spice of life an’ all that.
4. Don’t condemn the frozen aisle
Another hack that will probably have the fresh food police pulling up on the curb. It’s really important to get a variety of veggies into your diet, we all know that. But frozen food has a really bad rep, and is often considered to be the naughty alternative to buying fresh. Actually, frozen vegetables are more fresh than those you buy from the grocery aisle in the supermarket, because they’ve been immediately frozen from picked. The broccoli you buy ‘fresh’ has come from the field, travelled in transit and has probably been on the shelf for a day or two.
5. Be smart and replace your regular coffee with genius coffee
If you’re a lover of coffee (and I’m not entirely sure why you’re here if you’re not…) then you know that nothing makes the day more manageable than that first burst of beans when you wake up. Now imagine if that coffee had been infused with ingredients that remove the brain fog, make you more focused, more energised and more motivated, so that you don’t need to keep topping up on caffeine every time you crash?
Thankfully, you don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to get yourself a cup!