5 Ways to Control Your Diet for Weight Loss or Clean Eating While Living on the Road
Here we go again. It’s the “New Year and New You” syndrome. Perhaps in the past you have made resolutions or commitments to improve your diet, lose weight, eat clean, yada, yada. This year, be easy on yourself and achieve that goal to feel better behind the wheel, by eating better while on the road. Below are 5 manageable steps that my clients have found easy to follow and easy to make long- term habits. You can steer your way to a better diet this year.
1. Start with one meal or one snack where you know you could/should do better.
If you choose to change up your first meal of the day, (breakfast,) then start there. If you go overboard at dinner, then start there. Don’t try to fix everything at once, start with one meal, do it for two or three weeks, then move on to another meal. I encourage this technique when I am teaching a person with diabetes to count carbs… start with one meal, get it down with confidence, then move on and do better with another meal or snack.
2. Crowd out the poor choices with better choices. When you begin to replace chips as a snack with a banana, you are ‘crowding out’ the negative with the positive. It doesn’t feel like deprivation as much as it does a simple substitution. Less painful that way!
3. Work up to getting ‘5 a day.’ That’s a total of 5 fruits and vegetables per day. It can be two fruits and 3 vegetables, or 1 fruit and 4 vegetables, whatever! As long as there is a total intake of 5 per day. If you can’t cook food in your truck, then keep raw vegetables in fridge or cooler as a handy way to increase vegetable consumption. You may notice improved mental focus and stamina by crowding out toxic foods and allowing fruits and vegetables in.
4. Exercise. What does exercise have to do with eating better? When a person begins to exercise or pursue regular physical activity, they find that their brain/bodies gently gravitate to foods that are high in nutrients- to properly fuel that active body. You will be less inclined to seek out negative foods and reach for the positive ones, instead. Your body tells you what it needs, if you listen to it. Exercise will help you make the shift to better choices.
5. Sleep is not a luxury. It is essential. One of the things I stress to women drivers- (and all women,) is that to lose weight, or improve your diet, sleep is not a luxury. It is essential. There are two hormones that regulate our appetite, one hormone tells our brain when we are full and the other hormone tells us when we are hungry. A lack of sleep causes these hormones to work in reverse, so we are always hungry and never full! You may notice that the day after a poor night’s sleep you want to eat all day long, those are the appetite hormones working against you instead of working for you. Turn off your phone, or TV and make sleep a priority.
Take these 5 steps and work them one at a time until each one becomes a natural part of your day.
As hard as it may seem when living and working on the road, you CAN improve your diet for the long haul by doing it one step at a time. Consistency counts!
For personalized coaching, contact me and set up a free Discovery Call. We will discuss how you can take the wheel and achieve a healthy, happy and prosperous new YOU for 2022! Let’s chat, don’t know if I can help you, until I talk to you.
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