Top 5 Excuses for not Eating Healthy

1. Don’t Need to Lose Weight/Already Skinny. While healthy eating can help you lose weight, it has plenty of other benefits too. Losing weight is a function of calorie intake. You can eat unhealthy junk food and lose weight just as you can eat healthy foods and gain weight. The type of food you eat is less important than how much of it you eat when talking about weight balance. If you’re already at a healthy weight, eating healthy foods can help you stay healthy. Weight alone isn’t the best indicator of overall health so being skinny doesn’t always mean you’re healthy.

2. Don’t Know How. Eating healthy isn’t really that hard. Foods that are heavily processed are generally not as healthy as foods that you buy fresh and cook yourself. Load your diet with unsaturated fats, complex carbs, lean proteins, fiber, vitamins and minerals and you’ll have a very healthy diet. Stay away from foods filled with sugar, saturated fat and insignificant amounts of nutrients. Generally the more cooking you do yourself, the healthier the meal will be. Buying processed ready to eat foods on a regular basis will result in an unhealthy diet.

3. Too Expensive. Buying healthy foods can sometimes seem expensive. Strawberries are probably a lot more expensive than a bag of potato chips. Eating healthy sometimes requires you to eat smart. When fruits and vegetables are concerned, only eat ones that are in season. Strawberries bought out of season can cost as much as $5/pound. In season you can probably find them on sale for close to $1/pound. Be mindful of when healthy foods are on sale and buy them. Cooking your own food is also a lot cheaper than going out and eating garbage every night. Even if healthy foods do sometimes cost more, in the long run would you rather be paying more for fruits and vegetables or for costly medications and doctor visits? A healthy diet now can save you a lot of money down the road.

4. Don’t Like to Count Calories. Eating healthy isn’t about always counting calories and measuring your food. Counting calories is important when you’re trying to lose or gain weight but it doesn’t necessarily make a healthy diet.

5. Healthy Food has no Taste. Healthy food is thought of bland and tasteless. This isn’t always the case. If you’re eating healthy and aren’t enjoying your food, you need to learn how to cook. If you know how to cook, your healthy, home cooked meals will taste a lot better than anything you can buy. Invest in a cookbook and get creative.