Back before I started my healthy eating kick my regular fruit and veg intake was typically 3 or 4 a day. I kind of aimed for the UK standard recommendation of 5 a day, but mostly missed. When I saw that The Forever Young Diet recommended 9 a day, my reaction was "no chance"! I decided to aim at 7, thinking that would probably push me up to 5 or 6. After a while it got easier and I changed my target to 9. No, I don't manage it everyday - maybe 50% of the time - but I very rarely eat less than 7, which now seems effortless. This is how I do it.
Breakfast - a portion of fruit added to cereal. Sometimes a sliced banana, other days a handful of sultanas (golden raisins) or frozen berries.
Mid-morning - a banana or a fruit bar
Lunch - various options ...a sandwich with plenty of salad in it (somewhere between one and two portions) or with a handful of cherry tomatoes or a sliced red pepper on the side; a salad (3 or 4 portions); a vegetable based soup (one portion); left overs of something like vegetarian chilli made with lentils, beans, onion, chopped tomatoes and grated courgette (zucchini) (probably worth 3 portions): Innocent veg pots if I find them on special offer. Then I'll add a piece of fruit for dessert. Total fruit and veg count for lunch varies between 2 and 4.
Afternoon - an apple
Dinner - I always aim to include 2 vegetables, then more fruit either for dessert or later in the evening, making a total of 3 portions.
If I stick to this it gives a total of 8 to 10 portions a day. Not every day goes to plan. I may switch out the mid-morning fruit for a handful of nuts or a piece of cake (my office tends to run on cake!), or I may find at dinnertime that the only veggies I have to hand are frozen peas. Today was only a 7 portion day as fruit stocks had run low - sultanas with bran flakes for breakfast, fruit bar mid-morning, salad in a baguette bought from the office canteen for lunch (usually I take my own lunch but today it didn't happen), an apple on the way home from work, butternut squash wedges and sautéed leek with dinner, and a portion of grapes for dessert.
For me increasing the amount of fruit and veg has made a huge difference to the way I eat. Nine portions in a day leaves a lot less room for bad stuff - I'm simply not hungry enough to want too much of it, and eating plenty of fruit stops me craving sugary snacks. I try to go for variety in both fruit and veg.
I do probably lean a bit too heavily towards fruit, but I don't think it is a big deal.
I eat way more than the 5 a day - especially when I have so much from the garden at this time of year, and to be honest, I don't worry too much re meat at all. I love fish and if there is some I will choose that first. I LOVE vegetables!
ReplyDeleteI have a variety of dried fruits available as snacks and add extra veggies to any recipe requiring things chopped up into them (so tomato sauce will have grated/chopped finely something else in there too) figuring the extra calories are worth the extra portion.
ReplyDeleteI too fall into the 'more fruit than veggies' but think that is just for ease, most fruit doesn't need as many preparation steps as veggies.
I enjoyed rreading this
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