Tip #11…Eat Your Fruit and Veggies

I think we all know to eat lots of fruit and veggies. For better health, we can’t just focus on weight loss and size, we have to feed our bodies what they need, nutrients! Most importantly, fruits and vegetables are great at fighting disease, illness and giving us those nutrients our bodies desperately need and crave.  Let us not forget all of the other benefits, including increased energy and helping with weight loss.  Vegetables are low in fat and calories and high in fiber, all of which can help control weight.  They are filling, and low in sodium.  You should eat a variety of vegetables and choose different colors. Raw vegetables are especially good for your health. Salads are great as well as long as you are careful as to what you put on top.

Roasted vegetables have become some of my favorites these days.  We roast asparagus the most and it is my favorite way for broccoli.  We put the oven on a high temperature of 425 and coat the vegetables with a little olive oil, lemon, herbs and spices, a little sea salt and pepper.  Cook them for 10-15 minutes.  We have added a little parmesan cheese for the last few minutes for an added zest. They are yummy.

I always thought I would never “Juice”. I eat good. I eat lots of fruits and raw vegetables. I REALLY look forward to a juice each day and I miss it when I don’t have one.  The book “Hungry for Change” is a great resource. The personal stories in this book are amazing. Again, it reminds us how important fruit and veggies are in fighting illness and disease.

Most of our juices have kale or spinach, any fruit that we have, sometimes Spirulina (which “Hungry for Change” talks about), water and ice. Two recipes that we use are:

Recipe #1

• Celery
• Cucumber
• Kale leaves
• handful of fresh parsley
• Lemon or orange
• Apple
• water and ice
• Spirulina (if you have it)

Recipe #2

• Kale or Spinach
• Any fruit (bananas, strawberries, apples, peaches, grapes)
• 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds or walnuts
• water and ice

We mix these up in so many ways.  We always have kale or spinach. The fruit varies. We like adding spirulina or some type of nuts if we have them. Sometimes we use a little bit of coconut water as well which is yummy.

Today we had kale, an apple, a banana, spirulina, coconut water and ice.

For our kids, we modify it a little to make it better so they will drink it. We put mostly fruit, a little green and we usually leave the nuts out.  Sometimes I add some local honey to make it sweeter. We make them smoothies a lot, but we will talk about those in another post.

Slow down…enjoy today and try a juice! Let me know how it goes!
Kelley