Vegetables mean a lot of good things, more minerals and vitamins in our body, antioxidants, better physical and mental performance. Furthermore, filling the majority of our diet with vegetables is definitely good news for the environment. You can have many reasons like these to introduce more vegetables in your diet. Whatever your motivation is the most important things that this goal is in your mind and you are ready to make a plan to reach it. This article might help you to find scientifically approved practices which make adapting any new eating habits a bit easier. On the other hand, please note that there is no magic trick that helps, as time, concentration, and dedication is needed, but anyone can do it, including you! This article is based on science backed-up tips for adapting new eating habits (1).
1. Choose an achievable and measurable goal
As a first step make sure that you are setting a goal that you can reach and track. It can be different for everyone but as an example, you could choose to eat a veggie meal twice a week. To make it easy to track you can also choose two specific days eg.: Monday and Saturday. This is a goal that you can monitor easily and plan your shopping around it.
2. Planning is essential
Here we arrive to the second advice, planning is essential. Eating more veggies starts at shopping so you need to plan how you organise your shopping. Eg .: Eating vegetables doesn’t have to be expensive as you decide to eat vegetable dishes twice a week you are buying veg instead of the usual ingredients which can be meat in this case. You can also arrange your way in the supermarket so you must go by the veggies and this can serve as a reminder to buy them.
3. Changing your food environment
This gets us to the next point, if you are getting more dedicated to eat more vegetables and less fast-food and meat, it can be a big help to change your food environment to promote your new goals. By purposely going through the vegetable section you force your attention there or you can even decide to start to visit a new store which promotes this diet. Furthermore, it is also very important what is available in your kitchen when you want to prepare food, is it ready-made things or is it fresh raw ingredients?
4. Find two veggie recipes for a start
If preparing vegetable dishes is an entirely new thing for you, you can start by finding 2 new recipes that you like and would be happy to prepare. You can enrich your repertoire by time but this is very good for a start. You might not even need to look so hard, as there are many naturally plant-based Italian and Indian recipes with only a few ingredients, for example, pumpkin farfalle, chickpea curry and dhal.
5. Find someone ready to join
It is easier to make a change if you can find someone happy to join the challenge. The best thing if you can make your partner, kid, friend or whoever who lives with you to join but it is also great if you have a friend living elsewhere with whom you can share this experience. In the meantime, you can get social support from social media groups, friends and channels.
6. Remind yourself of your goal
Social media is also good to remind you of your goals. By joining to groups of people with the same interest you will get questions, articles and recipes about vegetable dishes so it makes it impossible to forget about it. Furthermore, you can sign up for plant-based food blogs or just read/watch videos about the benefits of eating more vegetables. This way you can keep yourself motivated on the way.
7. Plan for “emergencies”
Last but not least, imagine the worst-case scenario, you forgot to buy ingredients for the veg meal for Saturday or you don’t have time to cook. Now that you found out what the worst thing that can happen you can find a solution. For example, if you don’t have time to cook find a place from where you can order plant-based food or delay your veg day to Sunday. Drawbacks happen but they are not the end of the world.
I hope these 7 tips can help you to eat more vegetables and even keep your new habits. Although, don’t stress yourself with it too much, enjoy the experiment and go with the flow. Eating a bit more vegetables will already be a good step towards a healthier you and a healthier environment.
References:
Foodaware 
One thought on “7 tips for introducing more veggies in your diet”
Comments are closed.