Eat Those Veggies

I don’t know about you, but I am too old to yo yo diet anymore. I want my body to pick a weight that is healthy and stay there.  The secret I found to maintaining my healthy weight. is to eat those veggies.  YES, eat them everyday, with every meal and even at snack time. YES EAT THOSE VEGGIES!

Our bodies require, NEED nutrients. This is how we stay healthy, this is how we stop the yo yo dieting and live our lives. And vegetables are the most nutrient dense food on the planet. They are clean, whole & 100% awesome.

Let’s talk the good, the bad and the ugly of veggies. NOT all veggies are created equal. I found this out the hard way when the extra 50lbs I was carrying would not leave me.

Vegetables are the only food that we could live on 100% and not die. They are that nutrient dense. And in learning how to fuel my body I realized there are 3 categories of veggies: good for you, only sometimes good & eat very rare.

eat those veggies and lose weight the easy way

Different Kinds of Vegetables

Let’s break it down further: root veggies, fruits pretending to be veggies & all the others. 

ROOT veggies – the ones to stay away from. HIGH in starch which is converted to glucose and stored as FAT in our bodies. These are veggies that grow in the ground – Yams, beets, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, potatoes, carrots, yuca, kohlrabi, onions, garlic, celery root , horseradish, daikon, turmeric, jicama, Jerusalem artichokes, radishes, and ginger. I rarely will eat a root veggie. The starch count doesnt work for me. IF I do eat a root veggie I always pick from the colored ones first. ( carrots, beets ) And use the seasoning ones sparingly like garlic, onions, tumeric. If you are a low carb eater then root veggies are a great way to carb cycle or carb up as it’s still a natural source of nutrients. 

The next category which I will eat from sometimes is fruits thinking they are vegetables. The ones with seeds – tomatoes, peppers, squashes, zucchini, cucumbers, peas, corn, beans, egg plant – anything with SEEDS. Fruit is HIGH in sugar and so are these ones… our bodies don’t care where the source of sugar comes from (natural or processed) – it’s treated all the same, if it can not be used as fuel immediately its converted to glucose and stored as fat. So a good time to eat these ones is 2-4 hours before you are going to work your body. That way you enjoy the great taste and your body will use the fuel before it can store it.

A little trick to bring down the macro count is do not eat the seeds – so pick them out and eat the remainder of the plant. And the one fruit pretending to be a veggie that you should never ever eat EVER is corn. A farmer will feed his cattle, pigs, chickens corn to fatten them up so when he goes to the butcher he gets more $ for his animal. If corn is meant to fatten up an animal just think of what it is doing to you!! so put down the cob, and run away. lol  

And that leaves all the other veggies – fill up on them!! The leafy ones like all the lettuces, spinach, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, cabbage, and so forth. These are ones I sneak into a lot of different foods and they fill me up!! If I make a salad I will use 80% of these veggies then sprinkle with the fruit ones and then an oil based dressing. 

So if you are a veggie eater already and the weight isn’t coming off as easily it’s time to look at what types of veggies you have been eating.

eat those veggies

How to Eat Those Veggies

Now I encourage you to try a different way of preparing, cooking, roasting veggies. Example is I can’t stand boiled Brussels Sprouts. YUK. But cut them in half, sprinkle with olive oil & roast them at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes and I will eat them all up now. So if you have tried a certain veggie and thought it was gross, I encourage you to try a new way of preparing them. And as we age our taste buds change too so never dismiss a veggie.

And then lastly, sneak in veggies into weird places through out your day to get the most in.  What I mean is this. I use frozen cauliflower rice in my protein shake instead of ice cubes. There is no flavor change and I’m getting in a whole serving of veggies. Avocados are a great one to mash up and put in anything, fresh baby spinach leaves too – blend them in your shake, cut them up and put into pizza sauce, use as leaves in a salad & more.

So my closing point, add a serving of a vegetable to each of your meals. Get those nutrients in! Your waist line will thank you.