TAKE THE SPRING HEALTHY EATING CHALLENGE

With New Year’s Resolutions a fading memory, it’s time to renew your focus on eating healthy again. With that in mind, take on a Spring Healthy Eating Challenge. It’s designed to help you change your eating for the better, making small changes, and doing it with friends and family.

Here’s the challenge:
1. Pick one small healthy change to make a week (see list below).
2. Commit publicly to the challenge, and tell everyone what your change is each week (optional).
3. Put your entire focus on making that change happen. Set reminders, put visual reminders around your house.
4. Review at the end of each week. Did you do 5+ days of your change? Success! Tell everyone about it. If not, figure out what your obstacle is and plan to beat it.
5. If you were successful, pick another change to make the next week, but also continue your first change. By the end of the four weeks, you should have four solid changes if all goes well. If you weren’t successful, just continue the same change (or pick a different one if you didn’t like that one) and try again, but this time with a plan to get around the obstacle.

This is a general recipe for making small changes in your life, but healthy eating can be especially difficult, so it may be helpful to do this challenge with your family and friends.

Small Healthy Eating Changes
Here are some ideas for small changes.

1. Add a vegetable to lunch
2. Add a vegetable to dinner
3. Eat a vegetable or fruit for a snack
4. Add fruit to breakfast
5. Prepare a healthy snack for when you feel like snacking (carrots, grapes, nuts, banana, raisins)
6. Change a grain at lunch to a whole grain
7. Change a grain at dinner to a whole grain
8. Find a healthy breakfast recipe and try it
9. Pick a healthy recipe and cook 2 to 3 days’ worth of it (there are thousands online)
10. Pick a healthier protein for one meal (lean meats, plant-based protein)
11. Eat no fried foods
12. Replace sweets with fruit
13. No liquid calories before lunch (tea, water and black coffee are okay)
14. No liquid calories after lunch (tea, water and black coffee are okay)
15. Reduce alcohol intake to one drink
16. Drink more water (set your goal yourself)
17. Create a daily meal plan
18. Control portion sizes (set your goal yourself)
19. Eat slowly and mindfully for one meal a day
20. Eat whole food instead of prepared food for one meal a day
21. Eat a salad every day
22. Replace soda with water or tea
23. Before going for seconds, take a 5-minute break
24. Cook one meal a day at home
25. Discover the pleasures of a new food
26. Add more fiber to your diet (vegetables, whole grains, nuts, beans)
27. Switch starches for non-starchy veggies at one meal a day
28. Try cooking dinner without using oil or added fat

Again, these are just a few ideas to get you started. Brainstorm a list of healthy eating changes that you'd like to make in your life!

Posted in: diet, health, healthy eating, lifestyle, wellness