I hope you had a great Mother’s Day weekend.  We had an awesome webinar last week with Jason Brower on estate planning.  If you missed it, you can click here to watch or listen to it.

We have another webinar tonight at 8:00 pm with Polar USA on “How to Burn Fat without Spinning Your Wheels in the Gym.”  You can go to www.pgfit.com/polar to register.  Have a great week and be sure to read the 10 tips to increase your veggie intake below!

For optimal health and body composition, you want to aim for 6 to 8 servings of vegetables per day and a small amount of fruit depending on your goals.  Some find that hard to do… at first. 

Here are 10 Tips to Increase your Vegetable Intake

1. Buy vegetables when you shop for groceries: If vegetables are not in the house you can’t eat them! Focus on buying a wide variety of vegetables and eliminate the junk from your house. Just like when vegetables are not available you can’t eat them when processed junk food isn’t available, you can’t eat that either.
2. Change your mindset: Open your mind to enjoying different vegetables.  Just because you didn’t like certain foods as a child, that doesn’t mean that you won’t like them as an adult.  Just try them.  This will also set a good example for your children.  If you think vegetables are boring try different spices or oils for cooking. To change up your salads try experimenting with different dressings.
3. Prepare ahead of time: After grocery shopping, come home and wash and chop up your vegetables, and then store them in glass or BPA-free containers.  That way, when you are cooking your eggs, making dinner, or putting together a salad it is almost effortless.  This will ensure you eat everything you buy at the store, minimizing any waste.
4. Cook at home: When you start to explore all of the wonderful healthy meals you can make yourself at home, going out to eat becomes less appealing. Cutting back on going out to eat will also save you money.   Save going out to eat for special occasions or as a reward at the end of a long week. Pick a restaurant you know will have foods you want to eat, and make sure to include plenty of vegetables.
5. Add greens to your protein shake: Add spinach, powdered greens, kale, or broccoli to your protein shake.  You will increase your vegetable servings for the day and not even notice it.
6. Veggies & Eggs: To add nutrients and volume to your omelets, toss in steamed or lightly sautéed vegetables like spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, olives, onions, and garlic for a delicious meal any time of day!
7. Veggies to go: When you head out the door have an emergency pack of vegetables for when you are hungry and would otherwise reach for a processed high-carb snack.  Cucumber slices, jicama, carrot sticks, or celery sticks work well.  I love to add some almond butter to my celery sticks for a healthy fat and small amount of protein.
8. Bulk up your recipes: Add vegetables to recipes that have left them out.  Add spinach to a spaghetti sauce or broccoli, mushrooms, and cauliflower to a chicken curry.
9. Replace high starch foods with vegetables: Spaghetti squash or zucchini for noodles, cauliflower for rice, pizza crust, wraps, or oatmeal.
10.  Fruit as dessert: Treat yourself to dessert once or twice a week.  Add a couple of tablespoons of coconut milk cream (this is the solid that comes to the top when you let a can sit in the fridge overnight) to a ½ cup of berries.

With these 10 tips, adding veggies to your meal plan should be a cinch.

1% better every day, that is our goal!

—
Be Fit,

Michael Romig BS, CPT, CFT, PES, CES, RES & FT
PG Fit, LLC
832-303-7004
www.pgfit.com