1. For building a balanced meal.
Your ideal plate should be packed with vegetables and a serving of protein, complex carbs (like whole grains or beans), and healthy fats (like olive oil or nuts). From One Medical.
2. For cooking your eggs ~just right~.
Eggs! Thank you for being an easy and quick way to add protein to any meal. Here’s the guide to boiled eggs, from runny AF to crumbly hard-cooked.
3. For satisfying and delicious salads that won’t leave you hungry.
There is a world in which salads actually taste good and are filling. I swear! Choose a few combos from the list above and prep the ingredients so that it’s easy to toss (hehe) your lunches and dinners together throughout the week. From Lexi’s Clean Kitchen.
4. For easier meal planning (aka easier weeks).
Pre-planning what you are going to cook and eat throughout the week means you don’t end up leaning too hard on takeout when you’re tired. Get an entire week of recipes and all the prep and tools you need from BuzzFeed’s 2016 Clean Eating Challenge.
5. For healthy homemade lunches.
Not only is bringing your lunch to work or school so much cheaper than buying it, it’s generally healthier, too. From Lexi’s Clean Kitchen.
6. For keeping your fruits and veggies fresh as long as possible.
Keeping lots of vegetables and fruits around makes it easier to eat healthily, but nothing is worse than opening up your crisper drawer to a bunch of stinky, wilted romaine. Keep on top of expiration dates with this handy chart for all your groceries.
8. For an endless variety of satisfying soups.
Use this chart to help you come up with new soup combos, whether you’re planning meals for the week or just trying to eke dinner out of your fridge. From Lexi’s Clean Kitchen.
9. For homemade stocks and broths.
If you have leftover bones from a chicken, steak, turkey, or fish then you’ve got the base for a great broth. You can save your vegetable scraps for a vegetarian version, too. Homemade stock and broth is not only cheaper, it doesn’t have added flavors, sodium, and stabilizers that premade kinds do. From SheKnows.
10. For cutting sugar out of your drinks.
Saving my calories for cake. From the American Heart Association.
11. For cooking all your whole grains.
Grains are a healthy blank canvas for so many different types of meals—burrito bowl, hearty salad, or stir fry. And, whole grains have important vitamins, fiber, and protein, too. Get the entire guide to 15 grains (plus cooking instructions) over at Greatist.
12. For trying new, healthier cooking oils.
Oils have different “smoke points” (the temperature that causes them to burn), so use oils with low smoke points (olive, flaxseed, coconut) for raw dishes or baking, and use ones with higher smoke points (canola, peanut, avocado) for high-heat jobs like roasting vegetables or frying eggs. From Fix.
13. For healthier desserts.
Full disclosure: A lot of these swaps will change the taste and texture of your recipe. Start by changing out just ¼ or ½ of any ingredient the first time you try it. FromGreatist.
14. For DIY bottled salad dressing.
Having delicious dressing ready to go in my refrigerator means I’m 10 times more likely to actually eat salad. From CookSmarts.
15. For three-ingredient healthy meals that are easy AF.
Thankfully, healthy doesn’t have to mean complicated. From Women’s Health.
16. For making the transition to a Paleo diet.
The Paleo diet is pretty restrictive, but this list is a great start for general clean eating as well. Get a guide to going Paleo here.
17. For keeping an eye on sodium.
If you’re watching your sodium intake, check the labels on processed food, especially these six. From the American Heart Association.
Don’t forget that changing to a healthier lifestyle takes time!
You can do it!
