Making friends with salad

I'm not really a fan of new year's resolutions but lately I decided that I just need to include more raw vegetables in my diet. I am a healthy eater but even though I was a vegetarian for many years, I wasn't getting enough into my daily diet. I have been omnivorous again for the past 8 months. I would say that most of my diet was composed of complex carbohydrates while I was veggie. Now it seems to be mostly fat and protein. Quite the switch for me! Anyway regardless of how much I know about nutrition I often just find it difficult to be motivated to eat heaps of salad or veggie sticks. Recently my friend Jeff send me a really great TED talk about a woman with MS who radically changed her diet and experienced amazing decreases in her symptoms. It is not possible to say that it was her diet alone but nevertheless it was something that I found motivating. Sometimes that's enough. Also I took an amazing course last semester called Phytochemicals & Micronutrients and spending that much time studying veggies will certainly make you conscious of the food you are eating. So starting in 2012 I am going to try to get an minimum of 10 servings of fruit and veggies in my diet daily (fruit 2x servings, veggies 8x).

Here is the TED talk he sent me. It's worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc&feature=share&fb_source=message

So my daily large salad is pictured here on the right. It contains:

-mixed greens (folic acid, vitamin A, chlorophyll)

-kale (vitamin K, calcium, vitamin C, b-carotene, *sulforaphane, *indole-3-carbinol) 

-radishes (B6, folic acid, riboflavin, potassium, magnesium, copper, calcium, *glucosinolates)

-red peppers (carotenoids, *lycopene)

-alfalfa sprouts (vitamin A, iron, calcium, vitamin C)

-spring onion (*various phenols)

-carrots (b-carotene)

-The Mayr's house dressing (dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil- MUFA)



*phytochemicals- these constituents aren't vitamins or minerals but have been shown to impact health in terms of decreasing cancer rates

Note: this is not an inclusive list, but it outlines important ones!

This is just an example. I am trying to have one big salad like this every day in addition to the rest of my meals. I don't have really great advice about how to look forward to eating a plate of vegetables. But I will say that it gets easier and easier to do if you just stick with it. If you fall off the bandwagon and have a day where you don't eat great (it happens!) just jump back on for the next day, or next meal. It's not always about pounds, calories, muscle growth, etc. It's about health. Personally I feel really great when I manage to pack this many veggies into my day. I am finding ways to slip them into my meals and I look foward to going out and buying lots of veggies and filling up my fridge with them.



"Nope, still not interested in salad."