The Complete Guide For A Practical Healthy Pantry Makeover

Your pantry can be a blessing or a curse, it can invite you to do bad things, but a well-stocked pantry is the best way to ensure you have everything you need to prepare a healthy and tasty dinner night after night. You don’t have a big pantry to stock up on. To develop a healthy pantry, you can create a list of the foods you use most often, prefer the most, or are the most versatile. This way, you can stock up on a smaller kitchen pantry cabinet without compromising your limited space.

Someone out there needs to hear this: Just because you are not overweight, that would not mean you are a healthy eater. The truth is that most of us get too many calories and not enough nutrients from fast food, confectionery, prepackaged products, and carbonated beverages.

We know processed sugar is the villain, but it sure is followed by fat and salt. Hate to break it to you, but savory snacks also contain sugar, and sweet snacks also contain salt. Breaking the junk food habit combined with regular exercise will turn the scales in your favor.

6 Tips to Break the Junk Food Habit

1. Hide from junk food (or hide your junk food)

Junk food cravings could be one of the biggest obstacles in your wellness journey. Have you ever found yourself craving a second dessert treat after a hearty dinner, or finishing a packet of chips or chocolate the same size to polish your meal off? You’re not alone! Once you start with certain foods, stopping can be incredibly difficult.

2. Break the habit

The best way to break a habit is to become aware of what’s going on in your mind and body when you get cravings. Understanding what happens to our body when we eat junk food helps us step back and be less interested in this habit as we focus more on the horrible impacts they have on our health. Instead of ignoring your wishes, try to be curious and understand how you feel when you eat a particular food.

The next time you feel the urge to eat junk food, wondering what’s going on will help you quit your craving. Later, repeating this process enough will help you break the habit of cravings. If you find that you crave junk food when you are stressed or sad, consider finding other ways for emotional relief. Walking, making music, or writing in a diary can be a huge stress reliever.

3. Eat junk food carefully

Mindful eating can help you break your habits while letting you do exceptions. Mindful eating involves focusing all our attention on food -the flavors, texture, everything about it-, taking our time to eat slowly and chew well, and being physically and mentally relaxed while eating. The occasional junk food is a part of life. The

important thing is to free it from distractions like TV and enjoy it so that you feel satisfied without overeating. Mindful eating can help you adapt to your hunger signals and prevent them from being invalidated.

4. Create balanced meals

Creating balanced meals can help us feel satisfied with our meals and reduce the risk of cravings between meals. Choose some of the following:

Fresh vegetables and fruits

Unprocessed foods

Whole grain carbohydrate options

Healthy snacks between meals

Milk and products of vegetable origin

5. Be aware of the food

Food doesn’t need meticulous engineering and flashy packaging to taste great. For example, you can easily make your tomato sauce using fresh tomatoes, herbs, olive oil, and garlic. Hearty food validates hunger signals without overstimulating brain reward systems and still tastes yummy.

6. Have enough sleep

Ever thought about how sleep -or in this case lack of quality sleep- could be the culprit behind your cravings?. However, it has been shown that the longer we are sleepless, the more hungry we feel. On top of that, when we are tired, we tend to eat energy-dense, sugar, and fatty food instead of healthy snacks. Sleeping for 8-9 hours compared to 6-7 hours can greatly reduce the risk of craving junk food.

Kick These out to Create a Healthy Pantry

· White rice and pasta.

· Salty, fried snack foods such as potato chips and corn chips. Especially chemically colored ones.

· Sugary food, brightly colored boxes

· Canned food

· High fructose corn syrup drinks.

· Yogurt that contains artificial sweeteners and colorants.

· Sugar-free, nonfat food that is possibly labeled “light”

· Take a look at the ingredients in your seasonings. Try making your own salad dressing

· Frozen appetizers that contain preservatives and sodium

Common healthy substitutes

These tips will support your healthy eating journey along with a healthy pantry:

• Use applesauce instead of oil when cooking. Try adding applesauce to half of the oil required in cake and cupcake recipes. It reduces the calories without losing taste or texture.
• Prefer brown rice over white rice. Brown rice contains more fibers and nutrients than white rice.
• Use organic, fresh herbs and spices instead of seasonings high in salt and additives like preservatives or artificial flavors. These whole ingredients are a gift of nature and you wouldn’t believe how amazing they’ll taste after a while as you drift away from artificial flavors and salt. Dried herbs and spices are great alternatives if you can’t use fresh herbs.
• Milk is probably the easiest of all food substitutes. There is a lot to choose from soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, hemp milk, nut milk, cashew milk, and coconut milk. If you want to avoid prepackaged alternatives, most dairy-free milk is fairly easy to make at home!
• Giving up milk doesn’t mean you have to give up butter. Coconut oil is a healthy and tasty option and is great cooked as well as raw due to it has a high smoke point.
• There are other reasons to avoid refined sugar, such as blood sugar and many products contain cheap, chemical-based sweeteners like corn syrup. Artificial sweeteners have not proven to be the better choice yet.
• If you do buy sugar, make sure you buy the raw and/or organic ones. You can also easily find many healthier white sugar substitutes such as maple syrup, agave nectar, dates, and organic fruit syrups.
• Local, seasonal fruits and vegetables. Store all the ingredients in the pantry and/or the freezer for a quick smoothie.

If you’re looking to lose weight and get healthy, then it’s time to start thinking about what you should be doing differently in your life. The good news is that there are many ways to make changes to your lifestyle that can improve your health and lead to better overall wellness. If you want to learn how to live a healthier lifestyle, download wannawell app for free.