Alright, alright, I promise not to bore you with my plant intake on a daily basis, but I have to say, I'm pretty proud that I managed to come very close to getting in all five servings for a solid week!Tuesday: This was the day of pineapple, cherries, seaweed salad, & kale salad. There were also some peppers, zucchini, & carrots in the lemon grass chicken we had for dinner. A strong start!
Wednesday: I've decided to start taking bananas with me to work every day to eat between breakfast and lunch, so there was that. Then for lunch, I had a good two-cup salad (plus a few other veggies on a chicken-wrap-thing). When I got home, I snacked on cherries and grapefruit (at least another cup, maybe more), and had a vegetable curry for dinner.
Thursday: I started out with the mid-morning banana; then for lunch I had my lemon grass chicken leftovers which had maybe half a cup of veggies in it, plus a good cup (maybe more?) of pomegranate seeds. Dinner was super exciting tonight -- we've been experimenting with growing different kinds of greens in the backyard, which has gone spectacularly well! They've gotten big enough recently that we decided it was time for a home-grown salad, which was FANTASTIC. I also threw in a cup or so of heirloom cherry tomatoes, then ate the rest of the package on its own. (This is another one of those things that I forget -- that I LOVE munching on cherry tomatoes; I just have to remember to buy them!) We rounded out the night with some snow peas, since they're now in season at our local farmers' market.
Friday: We have fresh farmers' market berries again, so I started off with at least a half a cup of raspberries with breakfast this morning, then mid-morning banana, then veggie curry leftovers and grapefruit for lunch. Early in the evening I finished off some basil tofu leftovers which probably had a good half cup to a cup of veggies in it, and then later I had a slice of spinach and sun dried tomato pizza. Got the fruit in, but I may have fallen slightly shy on the veggies.
Saturday: Berries in the breakfast plus a banana; we spent most of the afternoon at a barbecue where I ate mostly meat and Cheetos, so that wasn't exactly great for the fruits & veggies resolution. Before bed, though, I did manage at least a good two-cup salad, maybe more, plus a couple of figs, so if I didn't get quite to the three cups of veggies, I at least came close.
So really, not too bad for my first week! Two cups of fruit & three cups of veggies may seem like a lot, but what I've learned is that it's not so bad if you make it a priority and do whatever you have to to make sure you get them in. (Eg, a couple of days this week, I stopped by the Trader Joe's or the Whole Foods on the way home to grab a little salad or something, and making a habit out of the mid-morning banana helped a lot too.)
Also interestingly, I'm finding that if I go for the fruits & veggies first, I actually DO feel pretty full and crave other things less. There's been a couple of days where I haven't even been hungry for dinner, so eating a smaller amount of protein and carbs left me feeling just as satisfied and less snack-ey and deprived. At some points, I've even felt sort of uncomfortably full. I don't know sure if it's related, but part of me wonders if that's all the water & fiber, or if maybe my body just isn't used to getting enough fruits & vegetables in general so now it's a little weirded out.
Anyway, now that I've convinced myself that it's realistic, my plan is to try to make this five cups a day thing a real habit. Give it a try!
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