Healthy eating starts with the desire to live a healthier lifestyle and treat one’s body with kindness. Depending upon your goals and food sensitivities, eating healthy can have a range of different meanings. For some, healthy eating means the traditional low-fat diet with reduced calories.
For others, such as those following the ketogenic diet, it can mean drastically cutting carbohydrates and seeking foods rich in good fats. Healthy eating can mean cutting out certain reactive food ingredients (such as gluten or sugar) or adding in nutrient-rich ones to cover gaps in dietary intake.
One’s idea of healthy consumption can even fit a more global definition of health with sustainable, animal-free eating habits. Regardless of personal dietary needs and preferences, healthy food is food that makes the body and mind work better. Healthy eating is about consuming clean energy that nourishes and supports the body’s systems rather than clogging it with unnecessary, processed waste.
The easiest way to ensure a healthy diet is to cook meals at home. Cooking empowers people with total control of what enters their bodies and can be more cost-effective than eating out. One doesn’t have to be a professional chef to prepare professional-looking meals: With a little practice, anyone can learn to whip up healthy food at home.
Breakfast Recipes
- Spinach and Feta Omelet: Start the day off right with a high-powered, high-protein omelet from Reader’s Digest.
- The Ultimate Loaded Vegan Bagel: This tofu-filled bagel sandwich with dill and avocado can start one’s day rich in plant-based protein.
- Tomato Toast With Macadamia Ricotta: Light and full of clean energy, this supercharged toast provides both decadence and nutrients.
- Low-Fat Yogurt Parfait: A parfait layered with yogurt, fruits, and granola can be the perfect grab-and-go breakfast to prep for a busy day.
- Healthy Pancakes: Sometimes, nothing but pancakes will do, but you can indulge without being irresponsible when you make your own.
Lunch Recipes
- Thai Basil Chicken: This healthy and tasty lunch recipe is designed for bulk meal prep.
- Vegan Sweet Potato Buddha Bowl: This nutritious, vegan bowl provides a tasty, rich lunch of sweet potatoes and rice in an almond butter dressing.
- Low-Carb Buffalo Shrimp Lettuce Wraps: This shrimp wrap recipe delivers a keto-friendly way to prepare a jealousy-inducing lunch.
- Kale-Potato Soup With Bacon: Stay full until dinner with this hearty but healthy soup that offers a delicious way to consume one’s daily greens.
- Five Quick and Healthy Sandwich Recipes: Add variation to the basic lunch sandwich by trying these five quick and healthy recipes, one for each day of the work week!
- The Ultimate Winter Bliss Bowl: This warm bowl is packed with vitamin-rich vegetables, nuts, and leafy greens.
Dinner Recipes
- Diabetic-Friendly Sweet and Tangy Salmon With Green Beans: Try this low-sugar, sweet and tangy salmon that has reviewers raving.
- Healthy Date Night Flank Steak and Cherry Pecan Rice: Impress a date with a healthy home-cooked dinner that doesn’t sacrifice taste for nutrition with this elegant pairing of sweet rice and spiced steak.
- Vegan Roasted Cauliflower With Tahini Sauce: Eating vegan doesn’t have to mean eating plain, as this roasted cauliflower with tahini sauce adds a Middle Eastern spice to any homemade meal.
- Creamy Lentils With Spinach and Thyme: This low-fat creamy lentil bowl is packed full of vegan protein.
- Turkey and Zucchini Lasagna Roll-Ups: A light and healthy dinner alternative, this turkey and zucchini creation is packed with protein, potassium, and Vitamin A.
- Ketogenic Cowboy Butter Chicken With Zucchini Noodles: This delicious take on butter chicken and noodles cuts the carbohydrates (and the calories) of a delightfully savory dish.
- Black Bean Turkey Chili: This diabetic-friendly recipe is delicious and helps to keep your blood sugar stable.
Dessert Recipes
- Keto White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies: Indulge in one of the tastiest cookies around while maintaining a ketogenic diet with this low-carb recipe.
- Vegan Chocolate Pudding Pops: One can’t beat a chocolate pudding pop with a delicious avocado base.
- Frozen Yogurt Bark With Cereal and Fruit: Fun and delicious for kids and adults alike, these frozen yogurt bark treats are designed be customized to fit one’s individual taste.
- Lower-Sugar Vanilla Cupcakes: Indulge in sweet vanilla cupcakes with less sugar for those with a sweet tooth but the desire for a healthier lifestyle.
- Healthy Apple Pie: Nearly butter- and sugar-free (with recipe adaptations that can make it entirely so), this isn’t your grandmother’s buttery apple pie, but it tastes just as good.
Salad Recipes
- Everyday Salad Recipe: A simple salad doesn’t have to be plain with this customizable recipe for creating the perfect, healthy everyday salad.
- Healthy Italian Pasta Salad: The Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest ways to live, and this Italian pasta salad lives up to that reputation with fresh vegetables and a light, garlicky dressing.
- Assembling a Good-Fat, Keto-Friendly Salad: Salads can be the perfect ketogenic meal with this article’s four steps to concocting the perfect good-fat salad.
- Healthy Chicken Salad: At only 180 calories per serving, this five-star chicken salad is a healthy version of a popular American high-calorie side dish.
- Quinoa Salad: Quinoa is a protein- and nutrient-rich grain from South America that has a range of potential variations stemming from this base salad recipe.
Snack Recipes
- 29 Simple, Healthy Snacks for Weight Loss: This list of simple snacks shows that healthy snacking does not have to be complicated.
- Black Bean Hummus: This vegan and gluten-free black bean hummus is a quick and tasty addition to any snack time.
- Banana Bread Energy Balls: The energy-boosting ingredients in these powerful snacks provide the oomph to get through the typical mid-afternoon slump.
- Microwave Fat-Free Potato Chips: Eat a healthy version of the standard potato chip with these simple, homemade snacks.
- Best Ever Healthy Guacamole: Everyone likes guacamole, and with a name including “the best ever,” this recipe is sure to please.
- Low-Carb Keto Crackers: Snacking on a ketogenic or Atkins diet just became easier with these low-carb, crunchy homemade crackers.
Drink Recipes
- Carrot Beet Apple Juice: A juicer isn’t needed to gain the vitamin-rich benefits of this tasty mixture, which has a hint of refreshing ginger.
- Six Superfood Smoothie Recipes: This list of six smoothie recipes can allow anyone to personalize the health benefits of their blended concoction.
- The Transfusion: A Skinny Grape-Infused Ginger Mule: Satisfy the need for a refreshing alcoholic beverage with this 98-calorie skinny ginger mule with grape juice ice cubes.
- Low-Carb Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie: This expertly concocted low-carb smoothie satisfies a sweet tooth with only 10 grams of carbohydrates per serving.
- Martha Stewart’s Immune-Boosting Green Juice: All one needs is a juicer and fresh fruits and vegetables to make Martha Stewart’s favorite nutrient-rich juice.
