Tips for healthy eating

Whether you have tried to make changes and slipped back into old habits, or are coming to healthy eating for the first time, it can feel hard to know what to do or where to start.

What are your health goals?

First, think about what you’re trying to achieve by changing what you eat. You might be looking to do any or all of these:

• Lose weight
• Feel better generally
• Lower your cholesterol level
• Reduce your blood pressure
• Eat more of something (like fibre, or fish, or plant-based protein)

That way you can match your changes to your goal. For example, drinking more water is a healthy habit, which can help you feel better if you’re dehydrated at the moment – but if you’re trying to reduce your cholesterol levels, it won’t make a difference.

Being specific about your goals can also help you to keep an eye on whether the changes you’ll make are achieving what you want them to. If you want to eat more healthily, but don’t know what to change, keep a diary over a few days to get a picture of what you are eating, how much, and when. Use this to help you to prioritise what you would like to change and where to start as well as what you feel is achievable.

Generally, a healthy balanced diet should be roughly a third fruit and veg, a third starchy carbohydrates and a third protein (including beans, lentils, fish, lean meat and low-fat dairy products or dairy alternatives).

Looking at the Eatwell guide or learning more about a balanced diet can also help you identify what foods to eat more or less of to improve your diet.

How to start eating healthily and stick to it

You might feel overwhelmed by the number of changes you need to make. Remember, you don’t need to change everything at once. You might be more successful in the long run by taking things more slowly and just making a couple of small changes at a time, as it will be easier to stick to. Don’t try to make changes that you won’t be able to keep up long-term. Give yourself time to adapt to one change before starting on another.

Cooking from scratch

It’s a great idea to cook from scratch rather than using ready-made options. That way you can add extra fruit and veg to your dishes, take control of the amount and type of fat you are adding and keep the salt down. If you don’t cook much at the moment, can you commit to doing it once a week, maybe on a day you’ve got more time? If you plan to make more than you need, you’ll have a healthy meal for the next day too.

Look out for recipes for ‘healthy’ versions of your favourite meals – you can find hundreds of delicious ones by using our recipe finder.

Convenience is important too. Having healthy snacks, like some pepper sticks and cherry tomatoes, a boiled egg, or your favourite fruit, prepared and ready in the fridge will make you more likely to choose them.

Making healthy food swaps

Remember that it’s not so much about what you eat on special occasions, as what you do regularly. Think about your usual meals and how you could improve them. Which of these could you start doing?

• Switching from butter or ghee to vegetable oil or vegetable oil spread
• changing to a lower-fat milk
• having wholemeal bread instead of white
• switching from low-fibre cereals (like cornflakes or rice pops) to wholegrain cereals
• adding one or two portions of fruit and veg to every meal
• switching from crisps to unsalted nuts
• having one or more meat-free days each week, using fish or plant-based proteins (like beans, lentils, tofu or nuts) instead of meat
• switching from chocolate to fresh or dried fruits

Lunchtime sandwiches are an easy way to make regular healthy changes. Ham and cheese are often high in saturated fat and salt, and ham is a processed meat, so we’re recommended not to eat too much of it. Try switching to egg, hummus, tuna or low-fat cream cheese – and don’t forget to add lettuce, tomato, cucumber or other vegetables.

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