Healthy Eating: It’s All About Balance!

Balancing life with our health and wellness goals is the backbone of my business, and my life. I strive for balance for taking care of myself while still enjoying life. Let’s break down what this means exactly and how balance can help you live your best life!

There is no perfect eating and nutrition is meant to be individualized.Of course, food is fuel, but it’s also meant to give us joy and is a big part of our social life as humans. This is part of why meals plans don’t work because we can’t just follow some “perfect” plan and eat like a robot. It’s also why we need to have realistic goals for our body composition. We have to be able to eat in a balanced healthy way that can last a lifetime.

Basic Balance Tips:

1. Include foods you enjoy! This may seem simple, but we have to actually like a good part of the food we eat. I’m not goingto live my life without pasta or ice cream, so I fit it in.

2. Improve our relationship with food. This one takes time and work but is so worth it. We have to get rid of our food guilt and no food should be “forbidden” (unless you have an allergy or intolerance). We have to be ok getting joy from food to truly be able to balance it.

3. Listen to your body (mind included). I’ll speak more on this in the future, but we have to learn to listen to how food makes us feel how hungry we are, and

4. Don’t skip meals. Eating regularly and making sure meals and snacks are balanced with all the macronutrients (fat, protein, carbs) can help us better listen to our body. This is how we can prevent being famished and eating to uncomfortable fullness and being able to be more mindful of nutrient choices.

5. Let go of aiming for perfection. This doesn’t exist and can lead to all or nothing thoughts around food. This can make us say screw it when we feel we overeat a cookie, so might as well eat the whole box of cookies. This can be a game changer for balancing nutrition and health goals.

6. Make exercise and nutrition goals that realistically fit your life. It doesn’t matter how “amazing” goals seem if we can’t actually stick to them (forever). The good news is, we don’t need huge difficult goals to have a positive impact on our heath! Small, sustainable goals can really make a difference on our health and how we feel.

These are just my basic tips to start bringing balance into your life with health goals. I help clients work on their relationship with food and learn to balance all foods while still reaching their health goals. Reach out if you’d like support with these. The link below takes you to my sign up page for a discovery call to see how I can help you with your goals.

Elise Campbell, RDN, CSSD, CPT

Fitness and Nutrition by Elise