It’s a given fact that eating vegetables and fruits can do wonders for your health. Vegetables and fruits are packed with essential vitamins and minerals that help lower blood pressure, prevent some types of cancer, and reduce the risk of heart disease. Maintaining a healthy weight will also become a breeze if you regularly eat vegetables and fruits.
Regardless of how healthy they are, many still struggle to create healthy eating habits with vegetables and fruits. Most would eat vegetables and fruits but don’t know how to stay consistent with their efforts in eating them regularly. If you’re one of them, this blog post is perfect for you.
Here’s how you can create daily healthy habits by eating vegetables and fruits:
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Use Vegetables and Fruits in Your Favorite Dishes
Do you love to spend time in the kitchen? Do you find it satisfying to prepare meals from scratch? If you answered “yes” to both questions, then you’ll surely love this first tip.
One of the easiest ways to create daily healthy habits is to add vegetables and fruits to your favorite dishes. For example, you can add several slices of fruits, such as apples and bananas, to your favorite plain yogurts. While these are products that are highly consumed by people, getting a hold of them should be pretty convenient in stores such as Lidl, Morrisons, and even in Aldi’s weekly specials where you can find additional deals on fruits and vegetables.
Simple adjustments to your everyday meals can make a huge difference in your overall health, so make it a habit to shop for vegetables and fruits rather than aiming for ingredients that become part of your junk food meal.
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Clean Out Your Cabinet
It’ll be easier for you to fall into the trap of eating unhealthily (again) if your kitchen cabinet is packed with junk food. You won’t even think of eating vegetables and fruits when you know it’s much more convenient to open a bag of potato chips from the kitchen.
You can prevent this from happening by cleaning out junk food from your kitchen cabinets. Eliminating unhealthy options will most likely lead to healthy choices. If you’re hungry and don’t see any snack pies, cheese and club crackers, and snack cakes in your cabinet, you’ll be forced to make your own salad or slice some fruits.
Aside from helping you stay on track to creating daily healthy eating habits, getting rid of junk food from your cabinets will help you achieve weight loss faster. This is especially true if you’re combining your efforts with physical activities, such as biking and weight lifting.
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Make Smoothies
One of the reasons why you’re probably having a hard time incorporating vegetables and fruits into your diet is you don’t like preparing them. Slicing vegetables and fruits into small pieces can be time-consuming and stressful for many.
Fortunately, you don’t have to go through this process just to enjoy veggies and fruits — you can easily throw them all in a blender! Making smoothies is one of the easiest ways of creating daily healthy habits because it allows you to enjoy the health benefits of vegetables and fruits without the need to slice or prepare them.
There are plenty of vegetable and fruit smoothie recipes available on the internet, so you won’t have any problems figuring out what ingredients to use. Some of the most popular and healthy smoothies you can try today are blueberry spinach smoothies offering great health benefits from blueberries and spinach, apple carrot smoothies, and pink beet smoothies.
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Snack Vegetables and Fruits
Vegetables and fruits are very versatile as you can use them in many ways. Aside from using veggies for your meals and fruits as your desserts, you can also snack on them between meals.
See yourself hungry in the middle of the day? Try snacking on fresh or dried fruits. Do you hear your stomach growling after working out at the gym? Pack yourself some bell pepper and carrot strips paired with a low-fat dip.
When buying fresh or dried fruit, check the label and make sure that there’s no artificial sugar added. When it comes to dips for your veggies, opt to make them from scratch instead of buying ready-made dips from the supermarket.
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Cook Vegetarian
Meat has been a staple in many homes for years. While this ingredient is delicious and satisfying, do you know that your meals can still taste as great even without any type of meat in them?
Another way of creating daily healthy habits is by cooking vegetarian at least once a week. Depending on your availability, you can cook a vegan dish for your breakfast, lunch, or dinner. As you continue your efforts, aim to cook more meatless dishes several times a week — from once a week, twice, and thrice. With this progress, it won’t be long before you’ll cook and love eating vegetarian meals every day!
Giving up meat is tough, but it’s something worth trying due to the health benefits you can get. According to a study published in 2019, plant-based diets lower your risk of cardiovascular diseases. Eating more vegetables and less meat also impacts your mental health because it reduces the stress hormones in your body.
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Pack a Healthy Lunch
The convenience of fast-food chains is one of the reasons why many are easily tempted to eat healthily. For instance, if you see yourself hungry in the middle of the day, the first thought that comes to mind is often to order meals from the nearest fast-food chain.
However, you shouldn’t settle for convenience if you want to create daily healthy habits. Consuming fast food regularly can cause obesity, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, and various cardiovascular conditions. This happens because fast food contains excessive amounts of salt, sugar, and saturated fat.
Resist the temptation of ordering fast food whenever you’re hungry by packing a healthy lunch. This is something you should incorporate into your lifestyle, especially if you work in an office away from home. And no, packing lunch isn’t an overcomplicated process — you can pack lunch within minutes!
Here are healthy and easy-to-prepare lunch ideas:
- Balsamic roasted beets with walnuts and goat cheese
- Carrot parsnip and potato mash
- Easy roasted broccoli with honey
- Quinoa stuffed delicate squash
- Roasted asparagus with pecan parmesan seasoning
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Substitute Your Sides with Veggies or Fruits
You don’t have to eliminate some of your favorite meals to create daily healthy habits. To achieve results and ensure that you can stick to a healthier diet long-term, replace your favorite meals with something healthier.
You can start by replacing your side dishes with veggies or fruits. Instead of serving white rice, you can have black beans as your side dish. You can also replace dinner rolls and other types of bread with baked potatoes, cabbage, coleslaw, or fresh fruit salads.
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Grow Your Own Garden
For some, eating vegetables and fruits regularly can become a problem because they don’t have a sufficient budget to afford fresh produce all year round. Vegetables and fruits can get expensive during specific times of the year, making it challenging for many to create and stick to healthy eating habits.
If you’re one of them, consider growing your own garden in your outdoor space. If you have a large backyard, convert it into a vegetable and fruit garden. If you have limited space outdoors, you can always do vertical gardening and plant seeds inside pots and other containers.
Because they’re within your reach, growing your own garden will definitely encourage you to eat more vegetables and fruits. And because they’re growing on your property, you won’t have to worry about breaking the bank just to stay healthy!
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Experiment with Veggie Noodles
Who says you have to give up your love for pasta just to create healthy eating habits? You can still savor your favorite pasta dishes without the guilt of using veggie noodles. As the name suggests, these noodles can be made from different vegetables, such as butternut squash, beet, cucumber, carrot, and even daikon radish.
These “zoodles” are low in carbs but have higher nutritional value than regular pasta. Veggie noodles are conveniently available in almost all supermarkets, but it’s still best to make them. As long as you have a julienne tool or spiralizer, you can create “zoodles” within minutes!
Once you have your veggie noodles ready, throw in your favorite fresh ingredients (try making zoodles with creamy avocado dressing, zucchini noodle pad Thai, or zoodles with edamame and kale pesto) to improve your nutrient dose.
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Try Healthy Desserts
If you have a sweet tooth, this last tip is for you. You can still enjoy desserts every once in a while because you can make some with fruits as your main ingredients. Fruit desserts are healthier and help you meet your body’s nutritional needs.
Some examples of healthy desserts are sliced bananas topped with low-fat frozen yogurt, classic strawberry shortcake, apple pie, and chocolate-covered bananas. Upside-down fruit cakes are also excellent options as they’re easy to make and flavorful.
Think Long-Term
Creating daily healthy eating habits with vegetables and fruits can be tough, especially if you’re not used to eating them regularly. But if you want to live the best life — one that’s free from any type of sickness — invest in your health by following all of the tips here. Trust us, all of the sacrifices you’ll make throughout the process will surely be worth it in the end!
