We all know just how important a healthy and balanced diet is. From a young age, we’re taught about the food groups and we’re constantly told that we need to eat healthily to fuel our bodies in the right way. Unfortunately, as adults, many of us fail to provide ourselves with a diet that can provide us with all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients we need to thrive. There are countless reasons for this.
We are constantly advertised unhealthy snacks and meals. Whether that’s fast food, takeaways, ready meals, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, or anything else. On top of that, a lot of these foods are convenient and can easily fit into our busy lifestyles. But it is really important that we do our utmost to change this. The best way to go about this is in baby steps. Radically changing your diet can increase your chances of not sticking to it.
Now, a good place to start out – that’s simple to implement change with too – is getting your five a day. This essentially means getting five portions of fruit or vegetables a day. Here’s some more information on how to achieve this.
What Is Your Five a Day?
Your five a day is simply five portions of fruit and vegetables. This will ensure that your body is getting plenty of goodness from these nutrient-rich foods. Your five portions should be five different fruits or vegetables – you can’t simply eat five apples, five portions of carrots, or five servings of peas. It needs to be varied to get plenty of different nutrients. Generally, one portion is considered to be a serving the size of one of your handfuls.
Juices and Smoothies
Why not start the day with juices or smoothies. This is delicious and a simple way to pack multiple portions of fruit or vegetables into your daily routine. There are countless options you can go for. Whether that’s a green smoothie made from greens, kiwi, and apples or a berry smoothie made by combining strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and more. Alternatively, if you head to the gym, exercise, or train, protein smoothies can combine protein and fruits and vegetables. Just make sure to be wary of your teeth if you’re drinking a lot of fruit smoothies. Blending the fruits releases sugar before you drink the smoothie, rather than chewing the fruit and it being released further down your digestive system, meaning it can impact your teeth without proper brushing.
Snacks
Snack on fruit and vegetables. Rather than reaching for a chocolate bar, cake or biscuit, prepare some delicious fruit and vegetable snacks. Fruit is pretty easy. A lot of it comes in its own skin or can be placed in a tupperware and taken around with you. It’s also enjoyable to eat on its own and as it is. For vegetables, you may want to consider cutting some carrot or cucumber sticks and having some sort of a dip, such as hummus, a peanut satay dip, or anything else that comes to mind.
These are just a couple of examples to get you off to a good start, Hopefully, they come in useful!
