Week 8: Your Mom Was Right

This week we begin to adjust our food choices. I will be critiquing the various diet gurus over the next few weeks after I return from my business trip. By now you may have started to develop your own ideas on what you should be eating. A good place to begin is an area that almost every diet guru would agree on. "Your Mom Was Right." Yes you need to eat your vegetables. Even the lowest carbohydrate diets advocate eating your vegetables. (Note that there are diets that advocate no carbohydrates. These are medically supervised diets to fight brain cancer or epilepsy. Do not try this at home.) Harvard tells us that the "average" American eats 3 servings of fruit and vegetables a day. This does not include potatoes. Fruit is a special case that we will discuss in a few weeks.

How many servings of vegetables do you have a day?

Harvard recommends 2 1/2 cups a day of cooked vegetables. My own personal goal is three cups of cooked vegetables daily, for me this does not include raw vegetables. I also try to have several cups of raw vegetables daily. I do not want to scare you. The thought of eating this many vegetables would have scared me two years ago. A funny thing about how averages work: If the average is three servings of fruits and vegetables, that means that many have less and some have none. A lot of us are not eating any. To suddenly jump up to that level of vegetables may result in stomach upset. For some eating raw vegetables of any kind can cause stomach upset. Gradually increase your vegetable intake to avoid this.

This week, and hopefully every week from now on, have a salad as a meal once a week. Here is what I eat several times a week.

1 small head of romaine lettuce
1 green pepper (red or orange is fine, for me the price will determine the color)
1/4 small onion
Small handful of cherry tomatoes

1 tbs olive oil
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
2 tbs Walden Balsamic Dressing

While I include a link to Walden Dressing, I do not recommend you buy it on Amazon. It is much cheaper at a health food store.

Making a salad is not difficult. You can even make it quickly in the morning and take it to work. Yes I know this makes a lot of salad. Most would consider it two servings. Here is a Kindle book with some suggestions.



In addition to one salad weekly, try to eat one cup of vegetables daily. If you are already eating more than this, that is great. But the point is through repetition to make it a daily habit. Fresh is best, but frozen is fine as well. One particular product we keep in the freezer is Vegetables for One. It is handy to always have a serving of vegetables two minutes away.

The final action for this week is to eat more fish. This also, except for the vegans and vegetarians, is not controversial either. Here is something I eat frequently with my salad.



If you are taking your salad to work, canned fish is easy to add to your salad. You might want to have a way to wrap up your empty can. Taking it out to the trash is also advisable. Do you really want a fishy smell in the break room? I do not mind it or even notice it, but other members of my household do. Plan ahead and dispose of the smelly fish promptly. The name of this series is Plan What You Eat, but you also need to plan how to dispose of the leftovers.

Some are concerned about fish, hopefully this week's homework assignment will calm those fears.



Action Plan:  Eat at least one large salad and one serving of fish weekly. Eat one cup of vegetables daily. Review the previous week's action plans and continue them.