Infographic: How Your Body Will Change Once You Start Eating Healthy | Fresh N Lean (2024)

Are you curious what might happen to your body when you start eating healthy?

We’ve compiled a list of the effects healthy eating can have when you consume fresh and healthy meals.

Take a look at this infographic for more details about the effects of healthy eating at certain points in your journey:

One Day After Starting

• You’ll experience fewer food cravings throughout the day, finally feeling in control over your food choices. This allows you to opt for healthy food – rather than the less healthy you may have choose before, setting yourself up for long-term weight management and health success.
• Hunger is more stabilized. Earlier you may have found you felt ravenous come 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., however now, you’re never bothered by hunger pains. This makes losing weight feel that much easier.
• Higher levels of mental focus and clarity. Any symptoms of brain fog or low concentration should begin to clear as you start noticing you can think more clearly.
• You’ll feel amazed that you can eat so much food without gaining weight. You might even feel overly full for the first couple of days of eating healthy. Stick with it however as that feeling will pass and you’ll be feeling better than you ever have before.

One Week After Starting

• Your energy level is higher than you may have ever experienced before, making completing daily activities – and even exercise easier. In fact, you may find you begin looking forward to your exercise sessions because you now finally have the energy to perform them.
• You may start to notice your pants are feeling looser than before. Your body will be shedding all the excess water you were retaining thanks to a high sodium intake, along with too many processed foods earlier. This also comes with looking leaner in the mirror. Your scale weight will be down anywhere between 2-5 pounds.
• Food cravings are lessening further. While earlier you may have craved pizza, burgers, and ice cream, now, you are looking forward to the healthy meals you have planned.
• You’ll notice you begin sleeping more soundly. You fall asleep easier and tend to wake up less throughout the night.
• Your body will become regular. This can come with a lower amount of bloating and discomfort along with looking slimmer as well.
• Moods are more stable. You have less ups and downs throughout the day and may even start to feel more empowered in your daily life.

One Month After Starting

• You’ll notice a new glow to your skin. People may begin commenting on how radiant you look and that you appear to be looking younger.
• A steady rate of weight loss (if using a lower calorie approach) to the tune of ½ to 2 pounds per week depending on what your starting point was.
• Some of the pre-existing health problems you may have been experiencing before (migraines, joint pain, irritable bowel issues, etc.) may begin clearing up. For the first time in a long time you actually begin to feel very healthy.
• Your wallet is growing – many people think that healthy eating is more expensive, but when you add up all the meals you eat out along with the higher priced convenience items you may be purchasing (chocolate bars, granola bars, canned foods, etc.) you’ll actually be saving money with this new approach.
• You’ll actually decline unhealthy foods that are offered to you. By one month in, you’ve come to really appreciate how much better you feel not eating those foods and prefer to stick to a healthy eating plan.
• Eating right is starting to become more habitual. After doing something for 21 days straight, you’ll find that you naturally tend to do it without thought. Making smart choices will start to feel like second nature.
• If you are exercising, you’ll begin noticing improved performance. You’ll feel stronger in the gym and notice that you recover much faster coming out. You experience that ‘post workout glow’ that everyone always talks about – but that you may have never felt before.
• You might find you start getting hungrier. This is thanks to your metabolism speeding up, getting used to all the healthy food you’re eating, which come at regular intervals. You can now eat more without gaining body weight.

Six Months After Starting

• A decline in your overall cholesterol levels if they were on the high side prior to starting this approach.
• Blood pressure may also decrease, lowering your risk of heart disease and stroke.
• You should be feeling noticeably thinner (if using a lower calorie weight loss approach) as you will have lost 10-30 pounds.
• Your bones will be getting stronger, reducing your risk of stress fractures and breaks. While this isn’t something that you can see, trust that it’s happening.
• Blood glucose levels will be under much better control, reducing blood sugar fluctuations and lowering your risk factor for diabetes (or, if you already suffer, your symptoms will be far better managed).

One Year After Starting

• You’ll still be enjoying all the benefits noted above as the effects of healthy eating will persist for as long as you continue to follow your diet.
• You’ll be at your target goal weight – a body weight where you feel healthy, strong, and confident.
• You might find yourself wanting to try new exercises/sports/activities. You finally feel you’ve reached a place where you’re confident in the physical activity your body can do.
• You’re sure that you will not revert back to your old lifestyle by this point. You’ve seen too many positive changes to give it all up for those foods.
• You finally understand how some people seem to be naturally motivated. For you, eating healthy isn’t something you work at any longer, it’s just something you ‘do’.
• By this point you will have learned to indulge wisely – you can treat yourself if you wish, and it will not cause you to fall right off your plan entirely.
• You’ll be feeling happier and healthier than you ever have before.
• The effects of healthy eating are a fact of life and you’ve formed beneficial, lifelong habits!

References:

• http://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-eating/healthy-eating.htm
• http://www.fitness.gov/eat-healthy/how-to-eat-healthy/
• http://authoritynutrition.com/how-to-eat-healthy/
• http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/healthy-eating-overview