3 Ways to Easily Add More Fruits and Vegetables to Your Diet

Ants on a Log All of us know that we need to start eating healthier and get more fruits and vegetables into our diets. The hard part is actually doing it. For many people, it's just hard to get past the taste. However, there are ways that you can easily add more servings of fruit or vegetables to your diet with little effort. We'll show you ways to cheat and still enjoy your food.

1. Start with salsa substitution.

If you eat a lot of dips, you're adding a whole bunch of useless calories into your daily rotation. Put away that dip and bring out the salsa. It contains numerous vegetables and fruit and the taste is terrific. Better yet, it's fat free and extremely low calorie. You can use salsa on just about anything to make it taste better and you're getting the benefit of adding more servings of these important foods to your diet with little effort.

You can use it with chips, or tortillas, on eggs or pretty much anything. If salsa is not really your thing, try experimenting with a couple of different brands or you can even try to make your own with vegetables you like. Fruit salsa is surprisingly good when combined with cottage cheese or other low fat dairy products. This is probably the easiest way to get more fruit and vegetables into your diet with little effort.

2. Add one more serving of vegetables or fruits with every meal.

At breakfast, have some low sodium tomato juice or a sliced apple. At lunch, you can add in some delicious corn or a pear. With dinner, try experimenting with a tossed salad with low fat dressing. This makes it easy to get at least three more servings of fruits or vegetables into your diet without any effort at all. What's more, these servings will help you fill up faster and avoid overeating other foods that are less healthy.

3. Retrain your palate.

Some of us simply just don't like fresh fruits or vegetables. The key here is to retrain your palate and make your brain think that you actually enjoy them. Start small and add low fat sauces or little things to make the vegetables taste better. For example, you can spread a little bit of peanut butter inside a stalk of celery. Suddenly, that tasteless stalk actually tastes good and you're getting the added benefit of more protein. This makes a great afternoon snack. Just don't overdo it on the peanut butter or you won't be getting any benefit.

Simple things can make vegetables and fruits a lot better. However, you can also try experimenting a little. Just because you don't like one fruit or vegetable doesn't mean you may not love another. Get creative and go outside your usual routine with new vegetables you've never tasted before. You can actually have a lot of fun by trying out all sorts of new foods and seeing which ones you enjoy.

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Here is a graph of my weight loss (if you are reading this in the future this graph will have updated for future weigh ins as well)... Clicking the image will open to a larger image.
weight loss chart

So while I was not able to do many of my normal exercises (basketball, volleyball, and walking) I have been participating in the 100 pushup challenge training program...  The goal of the program is to be able to do 100 consecutive pushups. While only 3 days of exercises it was more than zero. In the end it was 195 more pushups this week than I did last week (or the week before or the week before that :) ).  With my ankle/foot injury I am not able to do full pushups, but even so 100 consecutive knee pushups will be an incredible accomplishment.  Plus maybe by completing the 100 pushup challenge with knee pushups I will then be able to complete it again with either 1 handed knee pushups or full pushups depending on the status of my ankle.

Also on the food front... Once my dad left I got back on the straight and narrow.  Perhaps going just a touch overboard on the calorie restriction, but I did eat 4-5 small meals through out the day with the main staples of the my diet being nuts, eggs, and organic chicken hot wing sausages.

Also there is news about my ankle injury (see the next post) which I think will enable me to increase my exercise level a little this week in the form of swimming... 

So emboldened by my successful week, which was 4 days (Fri-Mon) of slight to moderate overeating (including 2 pieces of chocolate Father's Day cake my biggest diet sin to date) and 3 days of straight and narrow, I will be setting a 5.5 pound goal for next week. 

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