How to Eat Healthy Without Dieting

Whether your goal is to support your health or maintain a healthy weight, learning how to eat healthy without dieting is a vital tool that will last a lifetime. Here are 6 simple, yet highly effective, tips for eating healthy without going on a diet.

Healthy eating is often confused with dieting albeit they are not the same thing. A healthy diet promotes healthy eating habits to support overall health, while dieting is a restrictive way of eating used to lose weight or change body composition. Dieting often entails eating fewer calories, eating smaller meals, avoiding sugary foods and saturated fat, and emphasizing subtraction over addition.

By focusing on what you can add to your diet, you can take a positive approach to healthy eating free of guilt, shame, or fear. Instead of focusing on what you can’t eat, need to limit, or avoid, approach eating healthier by prioritizing what you can eat, need to increase, or begin eating.

Tips to Eat Healthy without Dieting

Here are 6 simple tips to help you create a healthy diet without dieting.

1. Prioritize whole foods.

One of the simplest ways to eat a healthy diet without dieting is to prioritize whole foods. Whole foods are 1-ingredient foods that have undergone minimal processing and come from plants or animals. They are the most nutrient-dense foods, as they are natural sources of energy, protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals. By ensuring your diet is primarily, not solely, composed of whole foods, you can help to ensure you are eating a balanced diet of nutritious foods, while naturally reducing consumption of ultra-processed foods and “empty calories“. Examples of whole foods include:

• Fruits and vegetables
• Whole grains
• Beans and lentils
• Nuts and seeds
• Dairy and eggs
• Meat, poultry, and seafood

2. Create balanced meals.

In addition to eating whole foods, creating balanced meals can help to ensure you’re eating healthy without dieting. A balanced meal includes all three macronutrients; protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats, in proportionate amounts. By creating balanced meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you can help to ensure you are providing the body with adequate calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients to support overall health. The balanced meal formula is “Protein + Carbohydrates + Fiber + Fat”, and examples of well-balanced meals include:

• Eggs + Toast + Spinach + Cheddar Cheese
• Milk + Oats + Berries + Almonds
• Chicken + Pasta + Broccoli + Pesto
• Salmon + Brown Rice + Carrots + Olive Oil

3. Focus on water.

While often overlooked as a nutrient, water is essential for life. The human body is roughly 60% water, and water helps to keep a normal temperature and blood pressure, lubricate and cushion joints and organs, move nutrients through your body, and rid the body of waste through urination, perspiration, and bowel movements. The daily water intake recommendations vary by age, sex, size, activity level, diet, and climate, as you will need more water in warmer clients even if you’re not physically active. While other liquids, such as coffee, tea, sparkling water, and fruit juice contribute to water intake and can be incorporated into a healthy diet, prioritizing plain water is a simple way to improve your health. On average, it is recommended that:

• Adult men consume roughly 3 liters of water per day
• Adult women consume roughly 2 liters of water per day

4. Enjoy some treats.

While eating whole foods and creating healthy meals are vital parts of a healthy and balanced diet, balance cannot exist without indulgence. Also known as “cheat meals“, treating yourself to foods that are richer, higher in calories, or processed is an important part of healthy eating. While the majority of your calories should come from nutrient-dense foods, a portion of calories should be used as discretionary calories and consumed in any way the person desires. Exactly how much and how often you should enjoy treats depends on the individual and their goals, but should be done in a way that honors their hunger and respects their fullness.

5. Honor your hunger and respect your fullness.

Horning your hunger and respecting your fullness are integral aspects of healthy eating. Your hunger and fullness cues are the body’s natural alarm signals reminding us of when we need energy and nutrients to function and when we’ve had enough. To truly create a healthy diet without dieting and restriction, we must learn, or re-learn, how to listen to and interpret our natural hunger cues. By using the hunger-fullness scale of intuitive eating, you can learn to trust your own body, distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger, and feel more in control of your food choices and behavior around food.

Common hunger signals include:

• Growling tummy
• Feeling tired or low energy
• Feeling weak, tired, or dizzy

Common fullness signals include:

• Full stomach
• Feeling content or satisfied
• Feeling stuffed, uncomfortable, or even sick

6. Be mindful of digestion.

While what you eat is an important aspect of a healthy diet, how it makes you feel is as important, if not more. As the expression goes, you are not what you eat, but what you digest and absorb. Not only does our digestive tract break down the food we eat into nutrients that we can utilize, but it is home to trillions of bacteria, collectively known as our gut microbiota, that affect our overall health. Although it’s normal to experience digestive problems from time to time, frequent signs of poor digestion, be it gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, or heartburn, are signals that our body is not getting optimal nourishment. By being mindful of your digestion, you more easily identify and address potential issues when they arise.

The Bottom Line

A healthy diet promotes healthy eating habits to support overall health without restriction. By prioritizing whole foods, creating balanced meals, focusing on water, honoring your hunger and fullness cues, and being mindful of your digestion, you can learn to eat healthy without going on a diet.