Even if you don’t like healthy foods, you still need the essential nutrients they provide. That means finding a way to work a variety of foods into your diet. Here, you’ll learn tips that will put you on the road to better health.
Healthy foods provide the nutrients your body needs to produce energy, build muscles, fight disease, heal injuries, and sustain life.
By comparison, a diet filled with unhealthy food puts you on track for health problems, from gaining weight and feeling lethargic to developing chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
If you don’t like healthy foods, it’s essential to find ways to overcome your personal challenges and transform your diet. Take heart if that sounds like an overwhelming task, because you don’t need to do it alone.
Our team at Docere Integrated Medicine specializes in nutrient therapy. We help you overcome food aversions and recommend ways to incorporate healthy foods into your daily meals.
Here, we share five steps to improve the quality of your diet.
1. Identify the foods you love and hate
For the first step, make a list of the foods you don’t like, as well as those you include in your daily diet. This information guides the changes you need to make as you work toward a healthier diet.
It may also help to identify why you don’t like healthy foods, especially if you have issues other than the way the foods taste. For example, some people have problems with certain textures and smells.
2. Choose comparable alternatives
You may be able to work around food aversions by finding healthy foods you like that deliver the nutrients you need. Here’s an example. Let’s imagine you gag at the thought (sight or smell) of cruciferous vegetables like Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower.
These vegetables are great sources of folate, potassium, calcium, and vitamins C and K, but they’re not the only foods providing these nutrients. You can skip cruciferous vegetables by eating veggies you like that have the same nutrients.
Taking this approach may not work if the list of foods you don’t like is too long and your food choices are severely limited. If you’re in that situation, you’ll need to learn other ways to eat healthy foods. We can make it easier with support and advice.
3. Go slow, but be consistent
You don’t need to revamp your meals in a day or even a month. Start with one healthy food and work it into your diet on a regular basis. It may be hard to believe, but most people overcome food aversions through repeated exposure to the item.
4. Learn hacks that make foods tolerable, or even enjoyable
The taste and texture of food changes depending on the type you buy and how it’s prepared. You may not like raw carrots, but love them steamed or cooked in chicken broth, for example.
Explore differences between foods until you find a version you like, such as:
- Cooked versus raw
- Frozen, fresh, or canned
- Steamed, roasted, or boiled
Getting creative with seasonings, condiments, and dressings will also make foods more edible. You can also experiment with ways to prepare meals that hide the foods you don’t like. You can hide chopped or grated vegetables in foods like spaghetti or pizza sauce, meatloaf, soups, and stews.
5. Plan and prep ahead of time
At the end of a busy day, it’s tempting to get your favorite fast food instead of cooking a meal that includes healthy foods. Planning and prepping ahead of time changes your mindset, ensures you have the ingredients on hand, and makes it easier to have healthy meals.
When you need help overcoming food challenges and improving your diet, the compassionate team at Docere Integrated Medicine creates a plan that works for your unique needs. Call or request an appointment online today.
