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Nine Ways to Make Healthy Eating a Habit

1. Use a few minutes of your lunch break to take a brisk walk each day. I'm talking a few minutes. If you can afford ten minutes, great. If it's twenty, even better. Most people who get into the habit of a daily walk—even if it's only down to the lobby via the stairs and back up to your floor—feel a great sense of accomplishment and feel motivated to keep it up.
   
   
2. Drink a glass of water before each meal. How hard is this one? Not only is water delicious and great for your skin, hair, and digestion, but it will make you less hungry. Drinking two or three extra glasses of water a day will change the way you feel almost immediately. The biggest change most people notice with this new habit is weight loss.
   
   
3. Leave some food on your plate at each meal, even if it's a small amount. I'm talking one bean or a crust of bread at first. Don't worry about wasting food. If you eat it, it turns into "waste" anyway. This is a good habit to get into for several reasons. It makes you conscious about how much you eat. It is good training for when you go out to eat and the waiter serves you a double portion of everything. It also makes you aware of how emotionally attached you are to your food.
   
   
4. Replace unhealthy snacks with nutritious snacks. What's your favorite daily indulgence? The afternoon cookie? The chips at lunch? The evening ice cream? Don't give up everything at once. Just pick one high-fat, high-calorie snack and replace it with a delicious, high-nutrition alternative. If salty is your thing: celery stick spread with Laughing Cow low-fat cheese, carrot sticks and low-fat ranch dip, air-popped popcorn, or salty rice cakes. Sweet: apple slices with almond butter, frozen yogurt tubes, or frozen berry and banana blender smoothies. Go online and search for low-cal snacks for more ideas.
   
   
5. Replace one brown food or snack each day with a green food. Brown foods are typically meats, breads and pastries, potatoes, chips, and crackers. Green foods are steamed vegetables (asparagus, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, edamame, green beans, snow peas, sugar snaps, collards, kale, etc.) or raw greens (spinach, lettuces, mesclun, sprouts, etc.). A bowl of steamed greens drizzled with olive oil and salt is so much more satisfying than a white-flour bagel after you've formed the habit. Green foods make you feel energetic and light.
   
   
6. Eat something red, purple, orange, yellow, and green each day. Most people are surprised at how monochromatic their diet is. Try it for one day and you'll find yourself saying things like, "Wow, I definitely don't eat enough purples!" Eating a rainbow is the easiest way to get more vitamins and minerals into your diet. Here are some suggestions to get you started. Red foods: tomatoes, red peppers, beets, strawberries, and watermelon. Purple: blackberries, blueberries, eggplant, radicchio, raisins, and grapes. Green: collard greens, broccoli, salad, Brussels sprouts, and green beans. Orange: pumpkin, mango, sweet potato, apricots, peaches, and butternut squash. Yellow: summer squash, pineapple, lemon, guava, and bananas.
   
   
7. Replace baked goods made with white flour with whole-grain versions. Sandwich bread, hamburger buns, crackers, cookies, bagels—everything that is baked these days comes in a healthier whole-grain version. Most people find that once they eat whole-grain breads, they never look back. Whole grain products taste better! Look on the label for "whole grain." The more fiber the product contains, the better.
   
   
8. Don't eat after 6 p.m. If you're a night owl, this one might be difficult at first. But studies show that the easiest way to lose weight and maintain healthy weight and digestion is to not eat at night. You will feel hungry in the morning—which is great, because eating breakfast is healthy and helps you lose weight too. Plan to eat a satisfying dinner by six, and then sip hot herbal tea or seltzer water with lemon wedges for the rest of the night if you crave sustenance.
   
   
9. Double the time it takes you to eat a meal or snack. It takes most people ten minutes to eat a meal. Set a timer for twenty minutes and make your meal—even if it's just a sandwich—last that long. Eating slowly aids digestion, makes you fuller faster so you don't overeat, and reduces stress—which impedes metabolism.