5 Tips to Eat More Vegetables

Think back a bit. It’s January 1st and you decided that this was the year you were going to get in the best shape of your life. You joined the gym (or started going to the one you already had a membership to) you bought some trendy diet book, went to the grocery store and picked up all kinds of healthy food, and then what? If you’re like most people by the time the calendar hits February you’re already skipping the gym, getting fast food at a drive-thru and letting all those fresh vegetables you bought get moldy.

Now I’m not here to tell you to go to the gym more. After all it is winter, snow storms, no sunlight, and cold weather can keep even the most dedicated of us from hitting the iron or doing whatever you constitute as “cardio”. I’m also not going to give you tips to save lots of time in your day, and strategies to avoid fast food. No, what I aim to do is show you a few tips on how to use all those vegetables you purchased at the store.

It is estimated that about 94% of Americans do not meet the USDA’s recommended daily requirements for vegetables. This leads me to believe that there are plenty of vegetarians out there who still don’t eat enough vegetables, how ironic. So if you’re part of the 6% then email me some suggestions I might have missed, this article isn’t for you. The rest of you should read on.

1. Stir Fry
Nothing, and I mean nothing cleans out your vegetable crisper quite like a good old fashioned stir fry. So grab a carrot, some bell peppers, broccoli, and lets get your wok out. A good rule of thumb is to use a vegetable of every color (red, green, orange, etc). If you’re cooking for yourself or for the entire family nothing beats a quick stir fry for various reasons. For starters it’s quick. Simply wash and cut up your vegetables. Once the pan is hot with a little bit of oil (peanut oil and maybe a dash of sesame oil) throw your veggies in and stir the pan a bit. Add whatever meat or sauce you want and your meal is done. In fact you can even skip the meat and just make a whole vegetable dish. Different vegetables take different amount of times to cook so a few pointers to take note of:

Cut each vegetable to the same size, not only will it look nicer but this will ensure everything cooks evenly.
Take a quick look online if necessary to determine what takes the fastest and what takes the longest to cook so you know what order to add your veggies.
Keep an eye on the pan. Stir fries are meant to cook fast at a very high heat so it’s a matter of minutes before you go from tender vegetables to mush or burnt offerings.

As an added bonus think about substituting traditional rice with either quinoa or even a sweet potato to add even more vegetables.

2. Eat a Salad Every Day
Salads can be incredibly diverse. How many times have you noticed a restaurant menu that had nearly as many salad options as regular entrees? A head of lettuce is arguably the cheapest food you can buy at a grocery store so take advantage of it. Mix and match some regular iceberg lettuce with the much more nutritionally dense romaine lettuce or spinach. You can also through in some radicchio, arugula, perhaps even a “spring mix”. Salads can be topped with tomatoes, cuccumber, red cabbage, carrots, even fennel to add even more vegetables to the mix. Just keep in mind that any amount of greens are good, but make sure you’re measuring your salad dressing exactly to cut back on additional calories. Your best bet is to use an olive oil based dressing seasoned yourself. Olive oil that hasn’t been heated retains all of its nutritional benefits and anti-oxidant properties as well as excellent flavor. With enough variations you can have a salad for lunch, dinner, as a snack. I personally recommend a nice salad before bed even in case you haven’t had enough vegetables earlier. Since many vegetables are best in raw form, a salad is the best way to get all of these good veggies in their purest nutritional form.

3. Make Some Soup
When it comes to soup you can put darn near anything you want in a pot with some seasonings and enjoy. Whether you’re making your own clam chowder or a more traditional vegetable soup you can through whatever you like in there. Unlike the stir fry you don’t have to worry about whether or not everything is cut up evenly because it’s all going in the pot and it’s going to hang out there for awhile. You also don’t have to keep your eye on it quite as closely. Unlike your vegetables turning into mush, it’s actually better to let these vegetables hang out in the pot as long as possible to impart as much flavor to the dish as possible. Since making a good soup can be time consuming, pick a day off and make enough soup to last you through much of the week, it’s incredibly easy to reheat and will keep until next week’s batch of soup. As for what you can put in it, virtually every vegetable you have in your fridge. If you’re worried that something’s about to go bad through some onions, carrots, celery, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, even asparagus and green beans can be turned into soup. Even more than a stir fry this is a fridge cleaner, so use as much as you have or as much as you’d like.

4. Snack on Vegetables
I understand it’s that part of the day or night and you’re starving but it’s not quite time to eat. Maybe you’re waiting for your lunch break, or perhaps you just got home and haven’t started dinner yet. Perhaps you’ve already eaten and are sitting on the couch watching TV when you get a craving. Your first reaction is to grab the quickest and usually worst thing around. At night this can be a big bowl of ice cream, or during the day it can be tortilla chips or any number of processed cookies and crackers. Even the snack options that “sound healthy” are often loaded with harmful preservatives and additives that can derail your bodies natural ability to process and digest food. So my advice snack on raw vegetables. The beauty of this in addition to getting the full nutritional benefits of these is that there is no cooking involved. Simply cut up a cucumber, zucchini, a red bell pepper, a carrot, some celery, or even fix a bowl of broccoli and have that as a snack. You’ll find not only is it tremendously healthier but it also helps you stay fuller longer, rather than fast sugars that will leave you starving again an hour later. You can perhaps even mix up your own salsa with a fresh tomato, onion, and green pepper, or even prepare a quick guacamole but what out how many chips you eat. Likewise the more you can eat raw the better, dipping everything in ranch might make the medicine go down easier but will cancel out the whole purpose of eating vegetables. If you’re looking for a topping, try an all natural peanut butter.

5. Keep Vegetables Where You Can See Them
I’ve offered a few deliberate ways to add vegetables to your diet, but here’s a mental suggestion that you probably wouldn’t think of. What happens when we open our refrigerator? We open it, look around and see what’s readily available. Perhaps we look in the meat/cheese drawer, or check out if there’s any available leftovers on the top shelf. Our produce is usually stashed away towards the bottom of the fridge where it’ll hang out until next month if we don’t pay attention to it. So reorganize your fridge. Make sure that the first thing you see when you open up your fridge is your vegetables. Restaurants have a stocking policy called FIFO (First in First Out) so treat your fridge the same. Make sure the veggies that have been hanging out for awhile are front and center so they’ll be more primed to move. Perhaps you can even convince your kids to eat some of the vegetables if they’re blocking the path to their favorite junk food. This sends a very subtle suggestion to our brain that we need to make these vegetables, if not right now, at some point soon. Give it a try and see how fast they fly out of the fridge.

Additional Tips
I can’t stress enough to buy organic where available. Not only is it better for you, it also is far more sustainable to the environment. At the risk of sounding like a tree hugger I’ll stop there, but trust me it’s worth the little extra.

Make sure to wash everything thoroughly. Even if a package says it’s washed it’s better to be safe than sorry so give it an additional rinse. The last thing you need is to get sick from eating vegetables which will deter you from eating them ever again.

Buy frozen not canned. Frozen vegetables are frozen at their peak so if your favorite veggies are not in season (and few are in winter) then frozen is a safe and effective alternative and they’ll keep for a very long time. If you’re worried about wasting money on expensive organic produce feel free to spend the extra on frozen organic food because it will last longer. Not to mention canned vegetables are often packed with preservatives and have a significantly higher sodium content for those with blood pressure concerns.

Vegetable juice is good but should never be your sole source of vegetables. I get it vegetables are gross, so pour a glass of v8 and chug it down. Sure this will get some well needed vitamins and minerals to your system but most of these juices are again loaded with extra salt, and nothing really beets (haha get it) whole veggies.

Do a quick search online before grocery shopping to find out which vegetables are in season. Depending on what time of the year it is you can find not only fresh veggies but cheap ones to. An additional search for recipes can give you some ideas what to do with them once you bring them home.

Vary your veggies. You like carrots good, but if the only vegetable you eat is carrots you’re not eating vegetables like you should. The best bet is to color code your vegetables. If it’s summer have some corn, a red bell pepper, a sweet potato, and a mixed green salad throughout the day and you should be set. For this same reason try to keep starch heavy vegetables low to moderate in your diet. Many vegetables have hardly any calories to them, but some like potatoes or even sweet potatoes can be quite dense. That doesn’t mean avoid these vegetables, but if you’re having a sweet potato for dinner treat it as a starch rather than a vegetable and add some greens to the meal as well.

Now have fun watching that number on the scale go down.