Simple Healthy Food Tips

Sugar-Free alternatives

One of the easiest ways to cut sugar from your diet is by switching to low-sugar or sugar-free alternatives. The best thing about this is that you don’t have to give up the tastes and foods you love, which makes the trip to healthy eating much easier. Here are some of my favourite ways to add low-sugar or no-sugar alternatives to your diet:

• Drinking sugar-free versions of your favourite drinks
• Having sugar-free jelly as a sweet treat
• Eating dark chocolate
• Using sweeteners in tea/coffee/baking

Baking and cooking at home

When you make your own food at home, you have much more control over what you’re eating and how much of it you’re eating. Fast food and ready meals often have excessive amounts of salt, sugar, and fat in them, which is perfectly fine on occasion! But making a habit out of eating these types of food can cause nutrient deficiencies and a lack of energy. 

Baking at home allows you to substitute foods in the recipes to make it exactly how you’d want it. My Grandma was diabetic and couldn’t eat food high in sugar, so I managed to find a recipe that used natural sweeteners and low-fat yoghourt in order to make her a cake! (See the recipe in my previous article here). Because I was baking at home, I could add in some diabetic chocolate too so she could finally have chocolate cake again. 

If you’re unsure as to whether something could be substituted, give it a search on google as there are many good blogs out there for people who are trying to cut sugar out of their diet or those who can’t have it in their diet. 

Make small changes

Don’t try to change your entire diet at once, make small changes and build them up to keep them consistent. If you try to make too many big changes at once, you’re more likely to slip back into old habits.

Start by adding a portion of vegetables to your evening meal, and adding some fruit with your breakfast (or just having fruit if you don’t already eat breakfast). Figure out what healthy foods you like and work them into your diet, trying new things is a great way to experiment with your food preferences and working out what’s going to work!