Top 3 Nutrition Tips for busy women
We live in a fast paced world where our priorities have shifted and often we rely on eating out or grabbing food on the go. Since our nutrition is one of, if not the most important contributor to our overall health it is important to prioritise what we can realistically control and if not how we can best navigate eating out or on the go.
Tip 1: Create a new habit that involves meal prepping your breakfast. We have all heard the saying breakfast is the most important meal of the day. At the curve our goal is to help you improve your lifestyle and we believe one of the best ways of doing this is by setting your day up for success. Creating a quick and healthy breakfast can take less than 5 minutes and depending on what it is, can be done the evening before or before you run out your door to start your busy day. We want to maximise the number of meals we can control in terms of preparing in advance and breakfast is potentially the easiest one. We recommend the simple technique of habit stacking. Habit stacking is a type of implementation intention. Rather than associating your new habit with a particular location and time, you associate it with an existing routine. It helps your brain to remember the new pattern and connect your new behaviours to a current trigger. For example if you are like me and are usually rushing in the morning I might find a recipe that I can prep the night before and stack it onto a habit like brushing my teeth before bed. Something like overnight oats is a quick and easy meal that can be made in less than 5 minutes and by stacking it onto brushing my teeth I can increase the likelihood of this new habit sticking. Oats also provides fibre and good slow release energy for the day. Try adding extra fruits and protein to the recipe to help reduce the glycaemic load of the meal and to add extra micronutrients to the meal.
Tip 2: Think Protein and fibre. Any time you are going to eat anything think fibre and protein. Whether our goal is better insulin/blood sugar control, weight loss or improving satiety we want our focus to be on protein and fibre intake. This means what fruit or vegetables are contained within the meal or snack we are about to enjoy, or what is the protein source of the meal. By doing this we will avoid/ decrease our ingestion of more hedonic high-fat high-sugar foods. For example if you reach for that packet of crisps or that chocolate bar as a snack and we are thinking protein and fibre we may replace the packet of crisps with a piece of fruit or that chocolate bar with a protein bar. These little changes will add up over time.
Tip 3: Keep a water bottle on you at all times. Drinking enough water has several benefits, including promoting brain health, skin and digestive health along with optimizing exercise performance. Water is also quite filling and has the potential to reduce appetite when consumed before meals. In one study, 14 people who drank 2 cups of water before a meal ate almost 600 fewer calories than those who didn’t drink any water. Thirst can be mistaken for feelings of hunger. If you’re always hungry, it may help to drink a glass or two of water to find out if you’re just thirsty.
Love these tips? Want to know more? Well you are in luck, we have just launched our ‘Nutrition for Women’ course!
In this short course we will take you step by step, through the menstrual cycle and how best to support it with nutrition. In this course, you will also receive your unique calorie & macro breakdown specific to you and your goals!