I recently held The Healthy Eating Habits Challenge which featured a month's worth of smart but totally doable habits, from adding an extra serving of veggies to your daily diet to focusing on eating a "rainbow" of colorful foods. Recipes and links to additional resources were included in the comprehensive tracking booklet. 

Every day and every change are designed to make you healthier.

If you missed my challenge, here are a few healthy habits to try and get you started on better eating habits.

Cook with a “buddy”! (Your “buddy” can be: kids, grandkids, family members in other states or facetime a friend/accountability buddy).

The point: Invite someone into the kitchen to do meal prep with you (in person or virtually). Check out how a friend of mine in England mentors her granddaughter with healthy habits in this recent blog post:  https://SoulisticWell-Being.com/blog/salad-is-pretty                                          

Start a container garden

Start small with a flowerpot, soil, and fragrant herbs like rosemary, thyme, basil, and parsley. To mentor the next generations, invite your kids/grandkids to help with planting, watering, snipping, and incorporating your bounty into recipes. If they don’t live close by, encourage them to start their own containers at home.  This is the perfect time of year to plant seeds indoors and watch your veggies or herbs grow! 

Eat More “Pulses” The word “pulse” specifically refers to legumes that are grown and harvested for their dry seed and grown as food. Beans, dry peas, lentils, and chickpeas are affordable, versatile, sustainable, and they're packed with fiber and protein. Put pulses on your table with homemade chili brimming with kidney or pinto beans; try savory split pea soup; buy a tub of hummus (it's made with chickpeas!); or toss a salad with a yummy salad and top it with cooked lentils.

 Eat good bacteria

 Trillions of beneficial bacteria live in your gut and play a role in everything from regulating your immune system to the health of your brain. (Fun fact: If you lined up your beneficial bacteria end to end; they'd reach the moon!) Keep your gut in tip-top shape by adding one or more bacteria-rich fermented foods to your diet including yogurt, kefir, kombucha, fresh pickles, or kimchee. 

 You can also take pro-biotics to enhance what you already have, especially after a bout of antibiotics that kill much of your gut’s natural bacteria!

Go meatless on Mondays

 Join the Meatless Monday movement and build your meals around plant-based foods instead of meat. It's good for your health—and the planet's! Check out convenient meat alternatives or keeping it easy with a Boca burger. Make meatless wraps with lettuce leaves or a tortilla, spaghetti sauce with fresh veggies or make lasagna wraps that are full of veggies.  Line the outside and the bottom of the dish with yellow squash and zucchini and top with a meatless sauce.  My favorite is Muir Glen Organic Italian Herb sauce.  Check out this link for easy ways to eat healthier in 2022!

Eat Mindfully

Slow down and savor the flavor, aroma, colors, and texture of every bite, and unplug from TVs and cell phones. (Fact: People who eat distracted consume 10-25% more calories at a time) Eating mindfully fosters a healthy relationship with food because it helps to reduce overeating and binge eating. Challenge everyone at your table tonight to chew each bite a few extra times and pause between forkfuls. Talk about (or be mindful of if alone) the textures, taste, and flavors you sense in the food.