A Step-By-Step Guide For Shifting to a Healthier Eating Pattern
The basics of healthy eating, what I like to call the “big rocks”, are:
Eat mostly a variety of whole, minimally processed foods
Eat less ultra-processed foods
Keep an eye on portion sizes to prevent overeating
Balance your meals
Focus on consistency and long-term commitment, not perfection
If you’re not familiar with each of these “big rocks” yet, see my article: “What does healthy eating really mean?"
Once you know what healthy eating means, the next step is to start working on bringing your current eating habits in line with those recommendations. That doesn’t mean going on a diet or totally changing the way you eat all at once. That’s never a good idea.
Instead, start where you are and make small shifts in the right direction. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started.
How to Build a Healthy Eating Pattern:
Step 1: Track Your Eating
It’s amazing how little we pay attention to exactly what and how much we are eating. It’s easy to mindlessly finish a family size bag of chips while watching tv, or grab a chocolate out of the break room every time you walk past it (which may be many times per day), or not realize how much nutritious food is missing from your diet.
Most people drastically underestimate how much they eat, sometimes by 30-50%. Until you start paying attention and tracking what you eat, you won’t really know what your current eating habits look like.
There are a couple of ways you can track your eating:
The hard numbers way:
You can use a food tracking app like MyFitnessPal or Cronometer. Those apps make it simple to track and calculate the numbers for you.
You can get an idea of how many calories you’re eating, how much protein, fat, and carbohydrates you’re getting, and, depending on the app you use, you can get even more information about your eating habits, like levels of vitamins and minerals.
While tracking this way can be helpful and some people find it very useful, I actually think getting too caught up in the numbers can be counterproductive. If it works for you, that’s great. If not, there’s another option that I believe can be just as effective.
The simple patterns way:
I don’t believe that you have to eat according to numbers. When I coach people on their eating habits, I almost never tell them how many calories they should be eating, or how many grams of carbs or fat they should be aiming for.
The truth is that there’s no magic formula for healthy eating. Even decades of research haven’t been able to tell us definitively which type of diet is the best for weight loss or good health.
In fact, the best conclusion research has been able to come up with is that the best diet is different for each person.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t track your eating. You absolutely should, at least at the beginning. If you want to use a numbers-based tracking app, you can.
If you don’t want to use one of those apps, the other option is to keep a simple journal in a notebook, spreadsheet, or notes app. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
Simply write down everything you eat and drink each day, with approximate portion sizes. You don’t have to measure or calculate anything, the idea is just to be more aware of what you are eating and pick up on any patterns.
Track using whichever method you prefer for at least one full week. Be honest and make sure you track everything.
You might need to put some strategies in place to make sure you track completely and accurately. Many people find it best to record their food right after they eat it so they don’t forget later.
You don’t have to track forever. If you find tracking to be too much effort, don’t worry. Some people feel that they always need to track what they eat to stay accountable, and others find tracking to be too time-consuming or strenuous. If long-term tracking works for you, that’s great. If not, you can consider this a short-term experiment, just to get you started.
Step 2: Look at Your Data and Decide on a Goal
Once you have a full week of data, take a good look at it and decide on one area in which you think you could start improving.
Here is a list of common healthy eating goals. In my experience, most people would benefit a lot from improving their eating in any of the following areas:
Eat more vegetables and fruits
Reduce added sugars
Reduce sodium
Eat more whole grains
Cook more at home
Drink more water
Balance your meals
It’s important to be specific about your goal, based on your current eating habits. Don’t just look at the overall data, look at your daily patterns.
For example, maybe you eat a lot of ultra-processed food for dinner, or you tend to drink sodas after lunch. Maybe you don’t eat any vegetables with breakfast, or you tend to eat sugary snacks in the afternoons. That’s important information and can help you structure your goals in a specific and effective way.
To find out how to set effective goals, check out my article: “The Outcome and The Process: How To Set Effective Goals”
You may have noticed that reducing calories is not on the goals list. It’s a very common goal, but in my experience, over-focusing on calories can actually backfire.
More importantly, though, if you’re able to achieve these healthy eating goals you’ll reduce your calorie intake without even trying, while increasing your diet quality and giving your body the important nutrients it needs.
Step 3: Make A Plan To Start Shifting In the Right Direction
Make Small Changes
Think about your goal and how it relates to your current eating habits. Identify the meals you’ll start working on, and decide on one or two small changes you can make to move yourself in the right direction.
You can look up brand new recipes, but you don’t have to. A tweak to a meal you're already eating can go a long way.
For example:
Eat more whole grains
Switch from white rice to brown rice in a stir-fry you already enjoy
Switch from instant oatmeal to homemade steel-cut oats
Decrease added sugars
Switch from flavored yogurt to plain yogurt and sweeten it yourself with fruit
Replace one of your daily sodas with water
Eat more vegetables
Add a side salad to your family pizza night
Add a couple of veggies to your usual morning ham and cheese omelet
Those small changes can make a big difference in your overall eating pattern without causing much disruption in your usual routine, and allowing you to keep eating the same kinds of foods you already like.
Here’s an example of how small changes can add up over just a week. The changes from the previous day are highlighted in bold and underlined.
The graphs at the bottom are part of a healthy eating challenge I run. In that challenge, we use a system for categorizing the food you eat by how processed it is – dark green is the least processed, light green is a little processed, orange is more processed, and red is ultra-processed.
To learn more about this system of categorizing foods by how processed they are, download my FREE Healthy Eating Guide. In this eBook, you'll learn more about the basics of healthy eating as well as a pretty unique system for determining how processed your food is, so you can make healthier choices.
To help you decide on your small shifts, here’s a worksheet you can use. Make a list of all the healthy, minimally processed foods (like fruits and vegetables) that you enjoy. Then make a list of all the meals you prepare and eat on a regular basis. That part should be easy, since you’ve been tracking your eating.
Finally, brainstorm some ways you can combine the two columns, adding something minimally processed to one of your usual meals to make it a little healthier.
Step 4: Work On Your Goal Until You Feel Confident, Then Build On It
Making changes, even small ones, can be tricky. Experiment with new ways to tweak your meals, and make sure you identify what’s working and what’s not.
If something isn’t working, try something else, until you get into a routine that you feel confident in and that you could stick with indefinitely.
Then, build on it. Make another tweak to the meal you’ve been working on, or start working on a different meal.
Keep doing that, and before you know it, your entire eating pattern will have changed for the better, and it won’t have felt like much of a change at all.
Step 5: Track Your Progress
If you continue tracking all the time, you should be able to see how you’re progressing. If not, it’s a good idea to check your progress every couple of months. Spend another week tracking everything, and compare that to your original week.
We often get caught up in our daily routine and forget to look at the big picture. Seeing the progress you’ve made over time can help you appreciate how far you’ve come, and that can help motivate you to keep going. You might also identify some new goals to work on.
Keep repeating this process, and remember that it is a process.
Healthy eating is a skill that takes time to develop, and needs to be practiced often. Keep working at it, and take your time. If it takes you a year or more to figure it out, then it takes a year. That’s fine. You will benefit for the rest of your life!