In partnership with The Fresh Toast

Your eating habits have likely fluctuated over the past months. Here’s how you can get back to normal.

Changes in routine can affect our lives, no matter how small or insignificant they seem. The pandemic, a change that’s the polar opposite of small, is bound to affect your health in ways both obvious and imperceptible. Your sleeping and eating habits might be some of the most simple changes to keep track of.

Even if you’ve been trying harder than usual to leave your house and enjoy fresh air, the unlimited access to your fridge and pantry might have left a quarantine imprint on your life. You might not fit into your jeans anymore or might find their fabric a little weird now that you don’t wear them as often. It’s okay. There are ways of getting back to normal.

Unbalanced food habits affect much more than our waistlines. These changes can be our body’s response to anxiety, and can be messing with your mental health and making you feel bad about yourself. Whether you’ve been eating less, more, or just different, it’s important to do some thinking and try to approximate your eating routines to something closer to healthy.

Food plays a huge role in our lives. We use it to celebrate, to curb boredom and to eat our feelings. By keeping an eye on your food habits you’ll get a snapshot of your health and mental state. Here are some tips that can help get your eating back to normal:

Schedule a lunch break

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Lunch breaks used to signal when it was time to go out for food and a walk. Working from home makes everything more muddled, but we’re still capable of setting up parameters to adhere to, like a start time, a lunch break and an end to work. While this schedule doesn’t need to be rigorous, it helps to stick to it as best as you can. This way, you won’t forget that you need to eat.

When planning out your week, account for the time you’ll spend cooking or ordering in your food. These small acts can help you have a better grasp of your day and will likely result in more productive work weeks.

Cook more

While most of us got into a habit of cooking more during the pandemic, it’s been seven months and people get bored of cooking and doing the dishes. If you’ve lost your cooking steam, try to get back into it by making it more fun. Look for recipes online, purchase a cookbook or subscribe to an app that provides you with good and simple recipes. This can all help get you excited about cooking.

Be smart with what you order in

RELATED: 4 Ways To Eat Healthier When Ordering Takeout

It’s unrealistic to think that you’ll be joyfully cooking three meals a day for seven days a week. When you order in, be conscious about what you put in your body. This doesn’t mean that you can’t order burgers or pasta periodically, but it does mean that if you’re ordering in several times a week, a couple of these orders can have some veggies and greens that will make you feel good in the long run.

Limit your snacking

It’s very difficult to not snack on stuff if it’s within your reach. Instead of constantly testing your self-control, avoid buying snacks, at least for a period of time. Once you’ve built up a bit of tolerance, buy a limited amount of them, including some healthy options, and have them when you feel like it. Try to avoid snacking while watching TV or working, since this can distract you and facilitate binging episodes and anxiety eating.

Read more on The Fresh Toast

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