Ep 13: Eat your Greens

I know you have probably always heard that you need to be eating 5-7 fruits and vegetables every day but this is no longer the recommendation.  It has since moved up to 7-13 fruits and veggies each and every day due to less nutrients in the soil therefore less vitamins and nutrients in our food.  

It also needs to be mostly greens, vegetables, and then 1-2 fruits depending on the season.  Are you getting that in every day?

I understand it can be tough!  That was why I decided to give you some ideas to help you get more greens into your diet.  

• Add them to your breakfasts; if making eggs, you can cut up some zucchini, onions, peppers and spinach and make a yummy veggie scramble
• We all know to add spinach and kale to our smoothies, but have you ever tried cauliflower or zucchini?  It doesn't change the flavor of the smoothie, but it does add nutrients
• Keep homemade chimichurri on hand to use as a dip, smother your eggs in, add to a sandwich, use as a dressing, or put on top of anything-it truly is the best stuff ever!
• Add more herbs to your salad for extra greens; so many times we just think of the lettuce but adding fresh herbs to your salad can change the flavor profile so much
• Grow your own herbs so that you have them on hand for all of your meals; we use our Tower Garden to grow our salad greens, herbs, and microgreens
• Hide them in muffins and breads.  Yes, I know, remember the sneaky cookbook from Jessica Seinfeld?  It doesn't have to be to hide them but just so you get more in every day
• Add them to spaghetti and taco meat.  You can hide pretty much anything if you cut it small enough

How do you practice getting more greens into your daily diet?  I'd love to hear what you are doing below!

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:20

When I think of summertime, I think green grass, vibrant colors warm. And all of these things make me think of nourishing my body with fruits and vegetables. And what I love to eat in the summer are a lots of smoothies, and salads, they are something that I go to all the time in the summertime, I don't want to eat anything heavy or hot, I want everything light and refreshing. So for me, it's smoothies and salads. And I know that you've probably heard over time that you need to be eating about five to seven fruits and vegetables every day. But unfortunately, this is no longer the recommendation, we actually need to be eating even more, because of the nutrients being depleted from our soils, we aren't getting the nutrients that we used to. So now they're recommending about seven to 13 fruits and veggies each and every day, which I think is really difficult to do, I really struggle to get that and I try to eat fairly healthy. So I wanted to share with you some ideas for getting more fruits and vegetables into your diet on a daily basis. One is obviously try for more smoothies and salads try to have a smoothie for breakfast in the morning, it doesn't mean that that's all you have. Maybe you have some eggs, maybe you have whatever your favorite thing is in the morning. But a smoothie even if you make a smoothie where everybody like you and your children only get a little bit of it. Rather than that your meal. That's okay, like you're still getting those fruits and vegetables. And I encourage you when you do make smoothies not to fill up on the fruits, make sure that you're adding vegetables to your smoothies, and healthy fats and healthy proteins. Because if you are filling up on just the fruits, it's going to be high sugar, and that can create some bloating in the belly. So we want to try to work on adding more vegetables into our smoothies. Some healthy fats like avocados, some people even put coconut oil, nut butters, and then also some protein. So nut butters, even putting nuts in we also throw seeds into hours, and then any protein powder that you might like, I know when we start to think about eating healthier, many of us start thinking about all the things that we take out of our diet. And instead, I want you to look at what can we add to our day in the way of fruits and vegetables. So I would recommend trying to get mostly greens into your diet, especially in the summertime, and then vegetables. And then fruit because I think most of us tend to go straight to the fruit. And then we fill up on lots of fruit, which is great. I have nothing against fruit at all. But I do think it's important that we really start paying attention to the greens that we are eating, whether it be the field greens, the green vegetables, or even the micro greens that you can now add to salads, and there's so many ideas I have for that. And many times what happens is people will go out and on their next grocery shopping day they will go and they'll buy all the vegetables, all the greens, all the fruits, and it ends up sitting in the refrigerator and you don't get to about half of them. And then they get tossed in the trash. So I want you to start looking at the way you eat your especially your greens and then your vegetables and your fruit. Look at them a little bit differently. So what I encourage in my family and then my clients is let's try to eat one specific green this week or you know this shopping trip, go buy your mixed greens, your field greens, whatever and then have salads for a few days. And then the next time you go to the grocery store, you're going to buy spinach and you're can add that you can either do like a side spinach salad, you can put spinach in your smoothies, you can add it to your eggs in the morning, whatever you want to do or even make it as a delicious side dish with onions. And I like to add red pepper but that's when you have your spinach and then the next time you go to the grocery store then you buy your kale So instead of bringing home four and five different greens, you are getting different greens, you're just not getting them all in one week, you're trying different greens each time you go to the grocery store. Now, for me that's like every other day. But maybe it's one week you're eating spinach. And then the next week you're eating kale. And then the next week, you might be trying collards or the next week, you might be having more like broccoli sprouts or any of the sprouts. So think of it that way. And I feel like that is less intimidating and less waste. So once your green start to become limp, a lot of people will just throw them away. And I'm going to encourage you to do this for me. So if you have some lettuce, that doesn't look so great, take it put it in your blender with some water, I would start with like a half cup of water, maybe a cup of water, and blend them together. So that it creates this green water, portable consistency. Nothing really not like a dip, you're trying to create it a little bit smoother than that. And then pour them into an ice cube tray and freeze them. And then that's what you can use for your smoothies to add some spinach in rather than always using fresh spinach, you can use your spinach that is getting a little limp and your kale that's a little limp, so that you don't waste that don't throw them away, put them in there and you will be all set. Now that you have all your ingredients, you've gone to the grocery store, you've purchased your greens for the week, you've purchased some vegetables and some fruit. Now what do you do with them. The first thing you need to make sure you do and I've mentioned this before, is wash them, get them prepared, whether it's sliced or chopped up. You know, if you're having carrots if you need to peel the carrots, I like to do a rough peel of my carrots so that some of the outside skin is still on just for the nutritional value. Same thing with potatoes I don't usually skin my potatoes when I make potatoes just that was a side note. But I try to get everything ready as soon as I get home from the grocery store. And then that makes it easier for you to add them into things while you're making them. And also for snacking, it makes it easier to just pull something out. Now I do encourage you to pay attention to some of the things some peppers will go bad quicker. Some berries will go bad quicker if you do that. So just be cautious. Make sure you look into which ones should be washed and which ones to wait on. But that is a great way to ensure that you are getting more fruits and vegetables into your diet. And then we want to start looking at where can we add them. So the first thing that I always recommend because you get up first thing in the morning, what do you go for you go for breakfast. So how can we start off our day right with getting vegetables into our body because like I said, it's fairly easy for us to get fruits in it's harder for us to get those greens and those vegetables. So add them to your favorite smoothie is spinach and kale. We all heard that you can add those to your smoothies but have you ever tried cauliflower or zucchini in your smoothies, you will not taste them that is not a taste that you will usually be able to taste in your smoothie. So just add them I will usually bring home some zucchini, chop it up throw it in the freezer and then the same thing with my cauliflower. I honestly usually just buy some frozen cauliflower and then add one or two to my smoothing. Another idea for breakfast is if you're making eggs, either an omelet or scramble I like to add the same things spinach, zucchini, onions, peppers, tomatoes, put those into a scramble and you've got a delicious egg dish with lots of vegetables in it and then I will sometimes add salsa on the top to kind of change that flavor a little bit. Or another thing which is a way to get more greens into your diet is like a homemade Chim cherry or a pesto dip. So I love to make a dip about once a week honestly where it is filled with vegetables. So a Tim cherry would have your herbs and some garlic I make up Piri piri sauce which I've mentioned before, which has peppers in it that is amazing. But these are great things that you can pour over top of your eggs to add additional greens into your diet. These dips are also great for snack time when you're looking for a quick snack. Sometimes that carrot or those peppers look less appealing on their own but if you can dip them into Something vibrant like a vibrant color that can make the difference between wanting them and not wanting them. So having those dips on hand and I'm thinking, green, vibrant color dips. I'm even thinking, as I was saying that just now, you know, maybe not your ranch dip, but the Green Goddess step where you're putting a lot of greens into that dressing, that's a great idea as well. So then we move on to lunch salad, that's a staple in our house in the summertime, just because it's simple. It is so easy to make a salad one that I always recommend people try if they're like, oh, it takes so long to make a salad. This one's so simple, and it is one of my favorites. And it's just some spinach or field greens, throw them on a plate, then cut up a few strawberries, add some blue cheese and some walnuts on top. And then use a homemade balsamic vinegar dressing. Easy again, oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, shake it up, pour it over top that is a simple healthy recipe. You can add eggs for a little extra protein if you want to more nuts like I mentioned. And then you could even have a little smoothie on the side if you didn't have a smoothie for breakfast when you are making these salads. Play around with the different types of additional greens you can add. So I'm thinking like micro greens, your broccoli sprouts, there's kale sprouts, there's radish sprouts, there's zesty mix. So there are all types of different sprouts that you can get and add them to your salad. You can also try different herbs in your salad, add a little bit I love cilantro. So add a little bit of cilantro to your salad. To change that flavor profile. We love to grow our own herbs and microgreens they're really easy to do. You can either there is a little tray that you can purchase, I have a link through Grove if you're interested Grove CO and that is a fun way to do it where it's I mean, it's so easy, you just lay them out on this mat with some water in the tray. You don't have to re water the train, and you just let them grow and they're usually ready within I would say seven days five to seven days. Usually you can just pull them off the mat and they're ready to eat however you'd like to. Another thing that we have is we have a Tower Garden. And this is a aeroponic watering system. And it waters you put the water in a bucket you have the kids about 20 little potted areas where we place our plants and I usually like to just do lettuce and herbs. Those are fairly simple and keeps it from getting too messy. And then we're able to still grow our salad greens, our herbs and our microgreens right there in the tower. I filled the bucket up, it lasts for a couple of weeks before I need to refill the bucket up again. So that's another thing that I like to help us get more salads in in the summertime. If I'm thinking about dinnertime, then of course, you know we are a family who has a protein usually unless it's like a meatless night and then we have our greens we always have some sort of greens and then we usually do some sort of grain. So that is another thing you know to ensure that you're getting your vegetables in. I also like to add vegetables into certain dishes. So for us spaghetti and taco meat is always mushrooms but if you're making some type of spaghetti is you can chop up spinach real fine because spinach does not have a lot of flavor. So chop that up real fine or zucchini real fine and just add it into your sauce and it goes unnoticed it's not so much too try to hide it from your children but rather just providing them with more nutrients and like I said I didn't hide it from them but I just didn't actively tell them until the other day and he already knew so that's another thing to do is just find ways to add them in to the meals that you are eating we love another thing that we love. I love to make meatballs for the kids and I can't remember which cookbook it was in one of the more popular ones I'll have to look and let you know but it was a it was to make buffalo chicken meatballs. You cut up celery, onion and carrots into the meatball. chop them up real fine. And then you know you make the meatball with it and it was so good. That now when I make spaghetti meatballs when I make meatballs for them to just snack on, I always add onion, celery and carrots to it because it makes them moist. If they're delicious, you can even do zucchini, shredded zucchini in the meatballs as well. I know that's a real popular one, especially for Italian dishes. So you know, don't be afraid to add different vegetables into your meats. And then another thing is your muffins and breads for snacks for breakfast for little sweet treat after dinner. This is another way you can find ways to get more vegetables into your diet is just by adding them to the muffin or bread you we all know about zucchini bread, you can add them in there, carrots, all types of things. So that's another way to get more fruits and vegetables into your diet. So those are my recommendations for getting more fruits and veggies into your diet mostly greens, greens and vegetables. Fruits I think are easier to get you can do pretty much everything I mentioned can be you can add fruits to muffins, we like to do a little fruit dessert in the evening, sometimes with our one of our favorite ones is just strawberries, and whipped cream, strawberries and whipped cream on top. The kids love it. Sometimes we'll do a little sweet cake with it, but not always. So that's how we as our family gets more fruits and vegetables into our life. And I did want to offer you an opportunity. The first week in August, I will be doing a five day smoothie salad challenge that you can join over in our form fit mom community and that's on Facebook. If you are interested, you can join us I will have the link in the show notes. Or you can just look up form fit mom, and you will find us. But that is a five day challenge. I will be providing you with a smoothie recipe, a salad recipe. I'll provide you with a recipe book so that you can make your own ones that you choose. And then we'll check in daily to make sure that we're doing that. And I will also be providing some exercises during that five day challenge as well. So if you're interested, make sure to join us if it happens to be after that week. Do not worry. You can always join us over in the forum fitmom community we do different challenges each month. I also place all the challenges in our guides tab so that you can go do past challenges. So we have a lot of different things that you can do with us there. I would love to see you over there so I can get to know you better. Make sure to also check us out at raising underscore healthy humans on Instagram. And I hope you all have a fabulous week.