Healthy Eating: Getting Back on Track

Most of us need to refresh our eating habits now and again. It can be easy to get off track with healthy eating plans.

If this is true for you, just think of healthy eating as a work in progress. When you learn from experience, you get better at it each time you refocus your plan.

Focus on your reason

Remember when you first committed to eating healthier? You had at least one good reason that got you started. Maybe it was something you even wrote down as a reminder for yourself.

It's the personal reasons that have the power to keep your healthy habits going. Right now, what is your most powerful reason for wanting to eat healthier?

My most powerful reason for eating healthier:
 

Learn from yourself

Now think through how you've been eating lately. Look for what's working and what's not working.

What's working? To start, give yourself credit for the healthy eating habits that you have now. Then figure out the secret to your success. What kinds of things make it easier for you to stay with a healthy habit? It could be foods that are tasty and easy to make or that tap into your creativity. Maybe it's replacing an unhealthy habit with something else. Or eating healthier could even be about your schedule or who you eat with.

What's not working? Next, give some thought to what hasn't worked so well. Which eating habit concerns you the most? Think about what triggers it, and how you think and feel about it. What makes it hard to stop or cut back on this unhealthy habit?

Getting off track with an important change in your life can be tough. But it can also give you new ideas to work with. Ask yourself—what can I learn from my mistakes that can help me refresh my habits? What do I want to change?

Refresh your approach

Eating healthier doesn't mean you have to overhaul your entire diet. Instead, you can just make one or two changes at a time, like any work in progress.

Think again about what works and what doesn't work for you. Go from there.

  • If refreshing your eating is a matter of breaking out of boredom, get inspired. Look through colorful food photos and creative recipes online and in cookbooks.
  • If you don't have much time for cooking, plan to have simple, healthy foods for when you're on the go.
  • If you're focused on an unhealthy habit you want to change, brainstorm ways to work around it. Maybe that means keeping a tasty, healthy snack on hand for when you have a sugar craving. Or you might change your routine, such as going for a brisk walk instead of going for ice cream.

Questions to ask yourself

Use the space below to decide how you want to refresh your approach to healthy eating.