Eat more vegetables. It can be heard everywhere, and by every expert that has ever written in the pages of fitness and health magazines, spoken on different day time talk shows, and even spoke to you at your local exercise and health establishment.
Sure, it sounds like it is a good idea and we all say we want to do it. But do we? Do we really fill 1/3 to ½ of our plates with pure vegetables (not including corn, potatoes, or other starchy “veggies”)?
If you always seem to be setting this as one of your goals, here are a few tips to help you succeed on finally doing what your parents always told you.
1) Find one, just one vegetable that you really like. By having your go to vegetable always in stock, you have no excuse to not at least get two servings in at a meal in the day. It can be fresh, frozen, or worst case scenario, canned (watch out for added salt). Do Google searches on all the different ways you can prepare the vegetable. Some of my personal favorites are steaming (quickest option) and roasting (great for making large batches smothered in olive oil and copious amounts of fresh garlic). Roasting is also great because the high heat (400 F) will crisp the veggies up and make them sweeter through the awesome process of caramelization.
2) Find ways to “hide” a serving or two a day. If you are a smoothie for breakfast kind of person, throw in 2 cups of spinach. If you have berries or anything else that is naturally sweet in the smoothie, you wont even taste the spinach. I am also a huge fan of breakfast scrambles. I usually put 2-3 servings of vegetables into my breakfast alone. Mix with some eggs, cheese and salsa and you are golden.
3) Get creative! Buy a new vegetable every time you go shopping, even if you know nothing about it. Once you get home – then look up how to prepare it! You might find one you never would have tried otherwise. Try cool recipes, such as carrot fries:
Cut some carrots into fry shapes, toss them in olive oil, put them on a baking sheet, sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast them in the oven at 450 degrees F for 10 minutes.
Even if you only eat one or two different vegetables, make it a HABIT and stick to it. Get out of your comfort zone once in a while, and you may discover a whole new taste that you have been missing out on for your entire life. In a world where dietitians and nutritionist keep telling you to stop eating this and that, I am telling you to eat MORE…vegetables, that is.