I had a lot of ideas about possible New Years Resolutions that you could tackle this year in working towards better health. Quitting Diet Coke (I will post this one later because several of you have asked me how and why). Removing foods with High Fructose Corn Syrup from your diet was another challenge I was going to issue. But then it dawned on me that when we tackle something too big we set ourselves up for failure.
Recently I read an article about a woman who lost 80 pounds in two years. The first year her only goal was to do 15 jumping-jacks every morning. Naturally this little step lead to her making other healthy choices during the day. The 2nd year she decided to give up candy. This lead her to give up lots of foods with sugar in them because she noticed she felt better not eating all the candy/sugar she had previously consumed. By the end of the 2nd year she had lost 80 pounds. No diet.
Our bodies crave healthy foods, and movement. I started thinking how crazy it makes me when people ask me to explain my diet…or what diet I am on “this time”. For me all the changes I made started with just deciding to give up diet soda. Which lead to giving up foods with chemicals & ingredients I couldn’t pronounce. Which lead me to being more involved and engaged in the preparation of my food. Which in turn lead me to making better food choices. Which in the end lead me to caring about where my food comes from and what is done to it between its creation and my table. Baby steps.
So this year I challenge you to PICK JUST ONE thing.
Maybe 15 jumping jacks each morning? Something little. Something you can do FOR SURE! Here are some ideas that will all lead you to feeling better, one little step at a time!
For 2010 I Challenge you to PICK JUST ONE, and do it all year long!
- Always park at the back of the parking lot (or the other side of the mall from where you need to go) and always take the stairs when an option
- Makes one night a week “meatless” in your home, try tofu, vegetarian dishes, etc that one night
- Drink a cup of green or black tea once a day
- Try eating all of your meals on smaller plates (we almost never use the large ones anymore, but the salad plates our set came with)
- If you are not ready to quit diet soda, or sports drinks, try drinking a glass of water BEFORE you have that drink
- Change one thing you eat to organic (apples, milk, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, chicken)
- Try a new food once a month. Cook with a mango, or try Greek yogurt instead of sour cream when you make Mexican, “think outside the box”
- Add ground flax seed to your diet. It can be put in shakes, added to cereal, granola, oatmeal, baked in cookies, muffins, breads, sprinkled on salads, added to casseroles.
- Try healthy fats, add avocado to your salads, replace butter with olive oil.
- Eat fish at least once a week
- Cook more. Even a slow cooker counts and will lead to foods much better for you than eating out, and less expensive too! Also kids will eat almost anything if they helped!
- Replace white rice with brown rice, or try new grains like bulgar, quinoa
- Eat breakfast every SINGLE day if you do not already
- If you do eat breakfast work on making it even healthier with an improved cereal, or replacing bacon with turkey bacon.
- Change out your Jiffy (or other processed Peanut Butter) for an organic one, nothing needed in the ingredients but peanuts.
- Swap out your current bread for one that has at least 3 – 5 grams of fiber per slice
- Educate yourself. Read one of Michael Pollan’s books. Rent Food Inc. Subscribe to an online vegetarian newsletter, or a magazine like Clean Eating, Cooking Light, or Body & Soul
- Find a local co-op, health food store, or whole foods…and shop there once a month. Just walking the aisles of these stores will give you ideas of new things to try. In the summer make it a farmers market.
