3 small changes for healthy eating

Moving to healthy eating habits isn’t as difficult as you think. Here are three switches you can make to basic staple items that you can make straight away to help you eat healthier, and start to enjoy tastier meals with more natural ingredients.

1. Change vegetable oil to coconut Oil: healthy eating without the tropical aftertaste

While vegetable oil is by no means a bad option in terms of a healthy food choice, by moving to coconut oil you will move to the gold standard in terms of clean and healthy eating. Here’s why:

a. Efficiency: the fat in coconut oil burns three times faster than other fats, making it a highly efficient energy source;

b. Neutrality: coconut oil does not taste like coconut, so you can use it to make anything, and not feel like you’ve been transported to a tropical island;

c. Satiety: coconut oil has been shown to increase the speed with which you feel satiated (fuller), and

d. The big winner: coconut fat has been shown to help metabolise fat you already have.

2. Change margarine to butter: I can’t believe its healthier…

A great rule of thumb when deciding what to eat is that if you need to think for more than 10 seconds to figure out where something came from or how its made, don’t eat it.

Here are a few of the benefits for switching from margarine to butter:

a. Great source of fat: although butter has gotten a bad rap as a contributor to heart disease etc., in actual fact it’s a great source of fat that is required by your body to help you produce hormones, cellular membrane, and generally to operate at peak efficiency.

Margarine, on the other hand, is hydrogenated, which means that some of the vegetable oil that it’s made of turns into trans fats (the kind you want to avoid).

b. Much, much more natural: to make butter, take the fatty part of cow’s milk and churn it into butter, and that’s it.

By contrast, there are approximately 16 different chemical processes that are necessary to transform margarine into the yellow substance you see in the supermarket.

And one more thing…butter melts on toast, margarine does not…and that’s just weird…

3. Change regular table salt to Himalayan Pink Salt:think pink for healthy eating…

Another great rule of thumb is to try to consume items as close as possible to the source. Himalayan Pink Salt, being 100% natural and unprocessed, contains all 84 naturally-occurring minerals in the human body.

By contrast, table salt has over 80 of these naturally-existing minerals removed during the production process, save for iodine, which has been added back due to the increased risk of goiter due to iodine deficiency.

Take the plunge and go for Himalayan Pink Salt (or any of the natural ‘full spectrum’ salts, recognisable by the sandy brown to pink colour). Its an easy way to enjoy great taste in your food, and to get all the natural minerals that that get stripped away when you go for the white, processed alternative.

Where to buy it?

So there you have it folks, 3 immediate changes you can make in your next grocery shop to help you eat healthier and more naturally.

Enjoy!

To learn more about healthy eating habits to achieve your fitness goals, contact James Staring, a leading personal trainer in Clapham, London.

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ABOUT JAMES STARING

James Staring is a personal trainer based in Clapham, London. His methods have featured in publications such as Your Fitness, Hello, Healthy, Daily Mail, Closer, and many more. After giving up smoking and entering the fitness industry in 2009, James has focused on his passion to help others transform their health and fitness. However, James is convinced that most people struggle so much more than they need to in an effort to improve their fitness. Through his company, Fit to Last, which he runs with his partner, Ali Page – James has helped hundreds of men and women make small adjustments in their daily habits to transform their fitness and to love how they look and feel.