The Daily Take Care of Yourself Checklist Pt. 4

This is a guest post from Luciana Miles, natural health & lifestyle coach & consultant for Transforming Greatness. 

You can check out her different coaching packages and courses right here in the Transforming Greatness store. 

Alright ladies and gentleman. We are getting our 30 minutes of sunshine a day, 30 minutes of exercise, and we are drinking 2 liters of water.

It is now time to add the last and final step to our checklist: Make sure that we're eating mainly fruits and vegetables.

Outside of the reasons that we hear about all the time to do this, which we will touch on, a couple of bonus reasons are:

It cuts way down on preparation time. If you're eating mainly fresh fruit and salads, your time spent in the kitchen goes way down.

Your caloric intake will drop. Provided you're not slathering the veggies in butter, cooking the fruit in copious amounts of sugar, and/or frying everything, your caloric intake should significantly lessen, which is really good news for those trying to lose weight.

The main reasons to do this that I know you've heard before but I'm going to put another way:

Fruits and vegetables keep you alive. They keep your body working properly, they fight disease, and they keep you young in every way (physically, mentally, emotionally).

They keep everything working as it should be. Notice I said fruits and vegetables, not just vegetables and not just fruits, both. They are not optional and they never should be considered optional or unnecessary.

Start with the fruits and veggies first.

Whatever you do start with them. Build your meal around them. Not the grains, not the meats, around the fruits and the vegetables. If you can, try to eat fruits separately from everything else, but if you can't, no worries, eat the fruit anyway.

If anyone tells you to stay away from any fruit or vegetable and you are not a pillar of health eating all the right things, then run far far away from them.

I say this because I've heard of people deciding to stop eating a certain vegetable or being told to stop eating a vegetable for "health reasons" but then they are still eating (or are not told to not eat) GMO foods, modern day wheat, processed foods, or vegetable oils.

So you cut out tomatoes, but are still eating a modern diet, so not only are you still taking in all these toxins and inflammatory foods but you have also gotten rid of one of the strongest antioxidants in the world (lycopene), which protects against cancer, protects heart health, protects against sunburn, alleviates pain, and protects your brain.

The sad reality is that most of us do not eat enough fruits and vegetables, do not drink enough water, do not get enough sunshine, and do not work out. So the last thing we really need to do is remove anything from the most nutrient dense, low calorie, healthful food groups from our diet.

Also do not let anyone stress you about the sugar in fruit-IGNORE THEM. It is not the same. Eat the fruit.

How to do it:

When incorporating more fruits and vegetables into your diet and to make it more of a habit, make a slight adjustment in your thinking and begin with them. Don't start with the grain or the meat. Start with the vegetable.

Get most of your groceries from the produce section, and shop weekly. You can get your pantry staples on a monthly or bi-weekly basis. But every week make a very quick trip to the grocery store and get your produce for the week. Maybe add a meat or a fish based around the produce you picked up.

When you go out to eat fill your plate with fruits and veggies. That means instead of a burger and fries, maybe it's a burger and a delicious salad. Or burger and asparagus. Yes, I know potatoes are a vegetable, but in this case adding more colorful veggies would be best.

If you're doing pasta, make sure you add a salad beforehand and maybe a side veggie to the meal.

And for dessert: fruit. Fruit will help satisfy a sweet tooth. Dates are delicious and very sweet. Not only is fruit wonderful for dessert, but it is also wonderful for lunch, as a mid-day snack, and for breakfast. When you're snacking or desserting, it's fruit.

Make your plate colorful.

This is not to say that you can never have grains, legumes, dairy, meat, processed foods, dessert, apple pie, or Oreo cookies. It is to say that you eat 75% fruit and vegetables 90% of the time.