In your quest to get ripped and muscular, you make sure to take the time to carefully prepare your meals as healthily as possible. You know that what you put into your body on a daily basis will have an incredible impact on how clearly you can see your abs, so there is absolutely no room for error.

Unfortunately, many men who think they are preparing their food healthily unwittingly make healthy food unhealthy. The following are some of the biggest mistakes that you might make while preparing foods that are generally considered good, nutritious choices.

If you are in the habit of making healthy food unhealthy, it’s time to switch things up and change how you prepare your meals.

Poultry
Healthy food: Grilled chicken
Unhealthy food: Grilled chicken with barbecue sauce

One of the easiest ways to make healthy food unhealthy is to smother your chicken breast with barbecue sauce before placing it on the grill. While chicken is definitely one of the healthier protein selections to choose this summer while cooking outdoors, the barbecue sauce that you use is very high in sugar and calories.

Most guys will use far more than the recommended one tablespoon listed on the nutritional panel, easily taking in 100 extra calories per chicken breast.

If you want a smarter alternative, prepare your own marinade out of low-sodium chicken broth, soy sauce and a small amount of Worcestershire sauce. Rub this into the chicken and let it sit for a few hours before grilling and you’ll still get plenty of flavor without the calories.

Alternatively, there are some low-sugar barbecue sauce varieties on the market now, so you may want to look into one of those instead.

Vegetables
Healthy food: Salad
Unhealthy food: Salad with fat-free dressing

With more and more information coming out about all the high-calorie salads in disguise, most men still think that layering on the fat-free dressing is the healthy way to go. Unfortunately, it’s an easily overlooked way to make healthy food unhealthy. For proof, all you have to do is take one look at the nutritional panel on the regular version of dressing and you can clearly see just how much fat it contains.

The problem is that many of those low-fat varieties of salad dressing are actually loaded with sugar, which spikes your insulin levels and will encourage the storage of body fat.

Additionally, many of the vitamins that are found in salads actually require dietary fat for absorption purposes, so adding a light amount of full-fat dressing with healthy fats is your better pick.

The key to avoiding this unhealthy eating habit is to just watch the overall volume you add so that calories do not get out of control.