3 easy ways to add variety to your healthy diet

Knowing what you can and can’t eat when you’re trying to be healthy is difficult. The advice about good and bad food changes all the time according to whatever new research or scaremongering report you’re reading.

Sometimes it feels easier to eat the same thing day in, day out. Before you know it you’re stuck in a dietary rut and waving goodbye to all your hard-won motivation and willpower. Boredom is the biggest threat to your diet – and it happens to the best of us.

Even with all the determination in the world, facing yet another plate of plain chicken and brown rice for the umpteenth night in a row makes it almost impossible to resist the temptation of a sneaky takeaway.

But following a monotonous diet is not only bad for your morale, but it can also prevent weight loss by decreasing bacterial diversity in your gut. To help you be as healthy as possible, we’ve identified three key ways of adding some much-needed variety.

Avoid fad diets

The 5:2, Atkins, alkaline, raw food – the list of fad diets is never-ending. They all posit different miracle solutions to help you drop weight quickly, but indeterminate and short-lived results mean most medical practitioners will tell you to avoid them.

Understanding how food actually affects your body is your best bet for sustained weight loss. There are plenty of online nutrition courses that will teach everything you need to know about following a lifelong healthy diet. You’ll never fall for bad advice again.

Helpful calorie counting apps

Figuring out how each snack or meal contributes to your recommended daily allowances is difficult. The biggest advantage of cooking the same low-calorie dinner every night of the week is that you don’t have to whip out a calculator every time you sit down to eat.

A food tracking app like MyFitnessPal will not only help you keep track of calories, its handy division into macronutrient subsections also helps you understand what’s in your food so you can easily identify any issues.

Get creative in the kitchen

Fine-tune your taste buds and sharpen the knives, because the only way you’ll be able to keep adding variety to your diet is by getting creative in the kitchen. You don’t need to sacrifice your entire evening or have a Michelin star to produce tasty and adventurous dinners.

Quick and healthy meals are the focus of Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15 programs, but if you don’t want to shell out for the recipe book you can always check out his Instagram for some free inspiration.

A killer body and a healthy, varied diet are yours for the taking. Just adopt these three practices into your daily routine and you’ll be ditching boring meal plans before you know it.