How to Create and Maintain Healthy Diet Habits

We currently live in an age where being healthy is the way to go. In the last decade, America has slowly become more health conscious as a higher percentage of the population have become overweight and obese. Bad diet habits have contributed to this problem, but now those habits are changing. All of a sudden, food labels are a must, salads are a fast food option, nutrition information is required at restaurants, yoga is a trend, and the Atkins diet is the thing to do. Instead of fighting it, we should all learn to live in this new healthy world. Eating right and exercising can be intimidating when it's never been done before, but it doesn't have to be. Use the following 12 tips to implement some healthy diet habits into your life and you will eventually live the healthy lifestyle everyone wants.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #1: Set a Goal

Set a Reachable Goal
Before you can create the necessary diet habits that it takes to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it is important to set a goal. In fact, setting a goal is perhaps the most important part in creating healthy diet habits. When setting a goal, remember to set one that is challenging but not unobtainable. If you make your goal too easy and quickly reach it, what else is left to strive for? At the same time, if you set a goal which is probably impossible to reach, you will only be setting yourself up to fail. It is important to know your capabilities and limits.

Set a Goal for Weight Loss and Maintenance
First, set a goal that is necessary for getting down to a healthy weight. Once you have settled on a healthy weight that you know you can happily live with, the second part of your goal can be to try to realistically maintain this weight within 5 lbs. The reason I chose 5 lbs is because everyone's weight fluctuates and it is not reasonable to expect your body to remain the same at all times. Just accept that weight fluctuation is inevitable because of many factors, including stress and illness.

So for example, if you weigh 150 lbs but feel that your ideal weight is 130 lbs, first set a goal to lose 20 lbs. Then, once you have lost those 20 lbs, set a goal to stay within the range of 130-135 lbs. The 5 lb window will allow you to be happy without having to constantly worry about being perfect.

Set a Goal Without a Deadline
Set a weight loss goal without time limits. By this, I mean to not set a goal to lose a specific amount of weight in a specific amount of time. While this may help to motivate you to work harder, it can also set you up for failure if you don't reach your goal in time. If 20 lbs is what you want to lose, then let the loss of 20 lbs progress naturally. Don't push harder to make it happen faster because you can end up hurting yourself. However, if you have a wedding coming up in 6 months, for example, that you would like to lose weight in time for, then it's ok to use that wedding as motivation. If that's the case, set a general goal to lose weight, but don't put pressure on yourself to lose a specific amount. Just be happy with whatever amount you do end up losing.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #2: Stay Motivated

Whatever the goal may be, it cannot be accomplished without proper motivation. To stay motivated in keeping up with your healthy lifestyle, it is important to remind yourself why you are dieting and exercising in the first place. Do whatever it takes to stay on course and remember what your goal is. Otherwise, you can easily get complacent and fall out of your healthy lifestyle habits. Some ways of staying motivated include the use of success, fear, other people's opinions, and competition.

Success...It's easier to stay motivated to stick with your diet after you've seen the results. If your diet habits pay off quickly, you will want to work even harder in order to continue your success. For example, when my girlfriend first stepped on the scale after a week of hard work and saw that she had lost 3 lbs, the excitement quickly motivated her to get back on the treadmill again.

Fear...The fear of who you've become can be great motivation, as is the fear of failure. For example, my girlfriend was initially motivated to lose weight after she watched herself playing softball in a home video and couldn't believe what she saw. She realized she had gained weight, but was disgusted at herself after seeing it so clearly for the first time. This revelation motivated her to lose weight and whenever things got tough during her diet, she would picture herself in the video. She used that memory as motivation to keep herself going, knowing that she never wanted to be that person again.

Other People's Opinions...Though we all like to say that it doesn't matter what other people think, that is always much easier said than done. Whether the opinions you get come in the positive form of compliments or negative form of criticism, they can be used as motivation to change your diet habits. For example, her relatives' blatant criticism was part of the reason my girlfriend was initially motivated to change her lifestyle and lose weight. Then once she actually lost some weight, she started receiving compliments from those same relatives, friends, and even complete strangers. It was these compliments that kept her plowing through when the times got tough and she desperately wanted to stop.

Competition...If you have someone other than yourself to go against, you will want to reach your goal not only to "win" for yourself, but also to beat whoever it is you are competing against. There is nothing wrong with having some competitive fun with a friend if you know someone else who wants to accomplish the same goal. For example, I had a friend who needed to lose 15 lbs to get down to the proper weight for his wrestling match. He was already working hard to get it done, but when he found out that someone he knew was also trying to lose weight, he turned it into a friendly competition. They decided to have a little wager with each other to see who could lose 15 lbs first. My friend used this to motivate himself to work even harder and in the end, he won in more ways than one.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #3: Sleep Well

Getting a good night's rest is extremely important in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The sleep pattern you observe affects your life. When you get enough sleep, you will have the energy for anything that may come your way. It is also important to keep a consistent pattern. If you are used to sleeping at 11pm and waking up at 6am, then try to do that as often as you can. If you are used to sleeping at 3am and waking up at 11am, then try to do that as often as you can. Your body will adjust to whatever hours you keep, so as long as the hours remain consistent, you can get a good night's rest, which will go a long way towards a healthy lifestyle.

From my girlfriend's experience, 7 hours was the right amount. When she got less than 7 hours, she would wake up tired and wanting more sleep. When she got more than 7 hours, it would make her feel groggy and sluggish throughout the day. When she got the right amount of rest, she would wake up ready to start her day and be more likely to stick to her diet habits.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #4: Always have Breakfast

Having breakfast everyday is one of the more important diet habits as breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Having breakfast will give you the energy you need to start your day and will allow you to stay consistently energetic. Breakfast also helps you maintain your eating habits so that you don't overindulge on heavy meals at lunch or dinner. Thus, breakfast will result in a more consistent eating pattern.

From close observation, my girlfriend proved to me exactly how important the first meal is. When she was able to eat breakfast, it helped to wake her up, gave her the energy she needed throughout the day, kept her from starving herself, and allowed her to eat more consistently. When she didn't get to eat breakfast, I noticed my girlfriend would be wide awake at first, only to come crashing down later. It caused her to stray away from her diet habits as she would end up eating 2 large meals instead of the consistent 5 she always strived for.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #5: Eat Often and Eat Less

When it comes to keeping up with a healthy lifestyle, how often and how much you eat is just as critical as what you eat. Instead of eating just 3 big meals a day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, spread your eating into 5 smaller meals/snack times. This way you won't ever starve or get too hungry between meals and will eat less at each interval. Big, overindulging meals can be avoided as long as there is breakfast and eating occurs consistently throughout the day. If you are going to have a big meal, have it at breakfast so that you will have more time left in the day to work it off.

For example, a typical day for my girlfriend may look like this:

8am - an English muffin with strawberry jam and a banana for breakfast
11:30pm - a turkey sandwich from Subway and some pretzels for lunch
2:30pm - a bag of 100 calorie microwavable popcorn, a handful of cashew nuts, and an apple for a snack
6:30pm - homemade orange chicken stir fry with steamed rice for dinner
8:00pm - a regular size plain frozen yogurt with strawberries and blueberries from the Red Mango chain for dessert

As previously mentioned, how much you eat is just as important to a healthy lifestyle as what you eat. Part of the problem Americans have with overeating is that the portions are humongous. When cooking at home, the amount of food consumed can be controlled more easily. However, when eating out, the portions offered are often way more than what should be consumed. One of the most unhealthy habits people have is continuing to eat once they are full, in order to finish everything on the plate. Therefore, whatever your stomach is used to eating, you need to "train" it to adjust to eating a smaller amount. If you learn to eat less during each meal, eventually your body will get used to it and you won't feel the need to finish every meal because you will know when you've had enough. Learning to eat less is a difficult task, but can be done with self control.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #6: Keep Track of What You Consume

If you keep track of all the food and drinks you have, it will force you to think more carefully about what you consume. This is especially important when trying to lose weight, but still useful when trying to maintain it. It's a reminder of what you should be eating to stay on track with your healthy lifestyle. Keeping a daily food log is the best way to do this. Write down everything at each meal and snack time, and try to find or estimate the important nutrition information such as calories, fats, sugars, carbohydrates, sodium, and cholesterol. Then at the end of each day, add up these amounts and see how you've done. The daily values you're supposed to have can be found by doing a little online research. There are even sites that calculate how many calories to have when trying to maintain or lose a certain amount of pounds per week based on your age, sex, height, and weight.

For example, when my girlfriend was trying to lose 30 lbs, she made Excel sheets to keep track of her daily food intake and exercise routines. She then went to a site online to find out how many calories a person of her size and age is supposed to have in order to lose 1 or 2 lbs a week. Then she researched exactly how much she was allowed to have when it came to fats, sugars, carbohydrates, etc. Even when there was no nutrition information available, she would still make an educated estimation. At the end of each day, she always knew exactly what she ate and rarely went over the daily limit.

If you don't have the time to do this or just don't want to, then try to mentally keep an estimation of how many calories you are consuming throughout the day. At the very least, you should always try to find out any nutrition information. Read labels when they are available, go to websites and look up the nutrition information for the restaurant your food is from, and add up the amounts yourself if you're making something at home with different ingredients.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #7: Limit Sugars and Fats
In order to build healthy diet habits that are maintainable, it's impossible to avoid all that is bad for you. Instead of eliminating certain foods from your life, it is better to simply limit them.

For example, if you love to drink soda and it is a part of your daily habits, instead of eliminating it, have it only a couple of times a week. This way, you can eliminate a lot of the "empty calories" that aren't good for you, but can still enjoy the thing you love in moderation. Otherwise, you will most likely find yourself going through crazy withdrawals and sooner or later, you will cave into those cravings and overindulge.

In order to eat healthy, the 2 things that should be avoided the most are sugars and fats, especially saturated and trans fats, as they are the most harmful to your body. They can cause weight gain when over consumed which could lead to health problems such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. If you do some research, you will find that the amount of sugars and saturated fats allowed each day are very miniscule in comparison to your entire calorie intake. Trans fats are supposed to be avoided entirely.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #8: Allow Yourself a Cheat Day or Several Cheat Meals

This kind of goes hand in hand with the previous tip in #7. If you focus too much on what you cannot have and try to eliminate them from your life, you will not be able to keep up with a healthy lifestyle long term. It is important to allow for some indulgence every once in while. For the sake of your physical and mental health, you must give yourself a little wiggle room.

For all the hard work that you put in everyday, exercising and eating right, once in a while, give yourself a break and enjoy whatever food you want. Depending on your preference, have all your cheat meals in one day or spread them throughout the week. This way you can still enjoy the junk food you crave without throwing your entire healthy diet out the window. For example, 2 times a week my girlfriend will get a meal from In & Out, Wing Stop, Round Table Pizza, or her favorite Chinese food restaurant.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #9: Desserts are OK

Everyone has at least one thing they love to eat or drink that they know would be impossible for them to give up, not even just a little. For many people it is desserts. It is okay to have that very one thing you want most as long as you are on track with the rest of your healthy lifestyle. Besides your cheat meals, allow yourself dessert daily. There is one condition of course: choose your dessert wisely. Try frozen yogurt with fruits instead of ice cream. Have a 100 calorie bag of light buttered popcorn in place of a normal bag of movie theater buttered popcorn. It may also help to avoid stocking up on sweets at home. Instead, go out and get your dessert when you have a craving. This way you can avoid the temptation to overindulge.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #10: A Fruit a Day

Fruits and vegetables are important to have in your daily diet, but not everyone gets enough of them. Vegetables can be hard to implement into your daily diet because they aren't conveniently available as other foods and are more difficult to cook. Fruits, on the other hand, can easily be inserted into your diet. Many of them are easy to eat and if you actually give them a chance, they are quite tasty. Another bonus is that some of them can even supplement the sweet tooth cravings you may have with their natural sugars.

When it comes to other factors that are important to a healthy lifestyle, such as exercise, it can be easy to get lazy. Making fruits part of the daily diet is something anybody can do. If you make an asserted effort, you can have at least one fruit a day. Some great fruits to eat are bananas, apples, cherries, strawberries, blueberries, other berries, grapes, and tangerine "cuties". Bananas and "cuties" are easy to eat once they are peeled and great items to take on the go when you are in a rush. The other fruits only need a quick rinse under the water to clean them before they can be consumed.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #11: Exercise Often and Mix it Up

Motivation is Once Again a Key Factor
For a lot of people, it's the eating right part of the healthy lifestyle that is difficult, while for others, it's the exercising. Physical activity itself is not easy, but getting the routine started is the tough part as good exercise habits are hard to maintain. For this, it is important to dig deep and muster up all the motivation you can find.

Don't Give Up
Once you are finally on that saddle, get ready for a lifelong journey. Exercising isn't something you should do only when you want to lose weight, it's something you should always do, even when you're simply maintaining it! It is difficult for most people to stick with their exercise habits once they get it going, so don't be discouraged if you fall off course a little bit. Instead of giving up all hope, remind yourself why you are doing it and get your lifestyle back on track before it's too late.

For example, if you don't feel like getting on the treadmill to run, just take a quick 15 minute walk around your neighborhood. Or if you'd rather stay in, pick up some weights and do some lifting for 20 minutes while watching TV. Do the littlest bit of exercising even when you absolutely don't want to so you don't fall out of your routine completely.

Exercise As Often as Possible
To make a real concerted effort at living a healthy lifestyle, it is imperative to be serious about exercise. If your goal is to lose some much needed weight and eventually maintain the loss, then you have to put in the necessary work. Exercising 5 days a week is ideal. Allow yourself at least an hour each of those days to get your work in, but if you don't have that kind of time, at the very least exercise for 20 minutes. When you are first implementing these exercise habits, start out slowly with only a few days of working out. Once the exercising steadily gets easier, then kick it up a notch and add in more days. Of course in life things happen and situations can change week to week. So if a certain workout day suddenly becomes unavailable, just move your workout back a day. When worst comes to worst, find 15 minutes to take a walk because it will be better than doing nothing.

Balance Cardio and Strength Conditioning
Losing and maintaining weight isn't all about running as far as you can for as long as you can. It is better to mix in both cardio and strength conditioning into your routine. If you plan to exercise 5 days a week, try breaking those days into 3 days of cardio and 2 days of strength conditioning. Perhaps something like running or biking on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with weight lifting done on the days in between, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then take a break on the weekends to rest and revitalize your body. If you enjoy doing one more than the other, say running, then you could also try running all 5 days for half an hour and then follow it up with 20 minutes of weight training on 2-3 of those days.

For example, when my girlfriend was losing her 30 lbs, she worked out 6 times a week and took a break on either a Saturday or Sunday, whichever day she felt like taking off. She ran on the treadmill each of those days, for 1.5 miles on 3 of the days and at least 3.5 miles on the other 3 days. When she was feeling extremely good, she would run as much as 5-6 miles. On the 3 days when she ran only 1.5 miles, she would get in some sort of strength conditioning as well. She used 5lb and 8lb weights to do lifts for her upper body and did squats, lunges, and plyometrics for her lower body. She also played soccer once a week and softball three times a week.

Have Fun With It
Find ways to make your workout sessions more fun because when they are, it'll be easier to make them a part of your healthy lifestyle. Go running outdoors somewhere that is scenic so you have something interesting to look at. Even better, if you have a dog, take it with you to keep you company on your runs. If you are running indoors on a treadmill, listen to some music or watch TV if one is available. Find some buddies to go to the gym with so you can feel more comfortable and have someone to spot you if needed. Find a team sport to join so you have others to play with. Try something new such as Yoga, Martial Arts, or Aerobics. Whatever you do, just find ways to mix things up so your workout routine doesn't become too stale.

Healthy Diet Habits for a Healthy Lifestyle Tip #12: Partner Up

Misery loves company. If you struggle to keep up with a healthy lifestyle, how do you think other people fair? Look around and you will find that you are not alone. Help each other out by doing it together. Find someone to go running with. Find someone to hit the gym with. Find someone who doesn't mind eating salads and sandwiches often to go have lunch with. And so on and so on and so forth. It will make your efforts easier if you find a good support group that can understand what you are going through, believe in what you want, and encourage you when you need it most.

Exercising and eating right are not fun things to do for most people. It takes a lot of hard work and self control to not only create the right kind of healthy diet habits, but to also maintain them long term. Living a healthy lifestyle can be done and I know this firsthand from witnessing my girlfriend lose 30 lbs in 10 months. It wasn't always fun for her and there were times when she wanted to give up, but she kept at it and never quit. My girlfriend proved that anyone can do it if they're willing to put in the hard work. Just know what you're getting yourself into and be ready for all the challenges that lie ahead. If you're prepared for it, you can make it happen too.