When you have a really busy schedule, it can sometimes be pretty hard to figure out how to eat healthy. It’s just so much easier and faster to run through the drive-thru when you don’t have a lot of time in between your commitments. It’s important to be aware of the possibilities you have to be more health-conscious and disciplined individual. Here are 5 ways to eat healthy when you’re on the run.
1. Pack Healthy Snacks In Your Car
This is something that you usually don’t think about until you are actually hungry and want something while you’re driving. Since you don’t have any food with you, it almost justifies the choice to stop and pick something up. So if you plan ahead of time each, you can figure out how to best stock your car. Some things that work really well in your car include: granola bars (as long as the weather isn’t too warm), nuts (peanuts, almonds, and walnuts), trail mix, and even cereal (frosted mini-wheats or a granola-based cereals are really good options). Dried fruit such as raisins, apricots, pineapple, or cranberries are also great to snack on.
2. Don’t Stop At Restaurants Where You Know You Won’t Get Anything Healthy
Even if you have intentions of ordering the fruit and yogurt parfait from McDonald’s, you might give in to the double cheeseburger meal anyway. Don’t tempt yourself unless you are really confident you can stick to your healthy choices. There are a lot of restaurants that have the perception of having healthy options, but the good stuff on the menu is usually never very healthy. Avoid stopping at the places that you might feel guilty about later.
3. Eat A Bigger Meal Before You Go On Your Way
If you can anticipate and plan for a busy day, it makes it a lot easier to figure out how you can eat healthy. Maybe on days where you know that you might not get a chance to make your own healthy meal, you could eat a bigger breakfast. Eating more for breakfast can help stave off your hunger, which makes it easier to resist making unhealthy food choices. Preventing yourself from getting that hungry is really important for helping you stay on track. It’s true that people compromise their food choices when they are really hungry, as they care more about satisfying their hunger than eating healthy.
4. Research Places That Will Have Healthy And Fast Options
Often there are many restaurants or stores that provide convenient meal choices that people aren’t even aware of. Looking more into what your area has for “fast food” besides the automatic places (McDonald’s, Subway, etc.) might help you discover a lot of options that you might not have known were even available to you. Look up restaurants online or talk to other people. Find out where your friends and co-workers eat when they’re on the run. Learning how other people eat makes it easier for you to develop your own eating habits.
5. Make Your Own Meal And Bring It With You
This is probably the most obvious answer, but it is sometimes pretty hard to make the time and effort to pack yourself food, especially when you are busy worrying about other things in your day. But taking time the night before or in the morning to make yourself a balanced meal to take along with you will help you out a lot. Making yourself a meal before you actually need to eat it will help you keep from slipping up and making a spontaneous unhealthy decision later in the day. It’s much easier to eat healthy sandwiches and fruits if you intentionally pack them for yourself.
People often put so much focus and importance on their responsibilities throughout the day that they push meals down their list of priorities. It can be dangerous to do this because then eating healthy isn’t taken into serious consideration for each day. Getting yourself into the habit of planning out your entire day’s eating schedule will get you on the right track to sticking to your goal of eating healthy. Your diet doesn’t have to suffer just because you are crunched for time, so just remember these 5 ways to eat healthy on the run in order to be more consistent with your healthy meal choices throughout the day.