More veggies, please

I've decided to try something new. I'm going to do my best to eat a lot more fruits and vegetables.

In the past I'd come up with this idea but thought it would be too expensive to buy a lot of produce so I didn't do it. Also, I couldn't come up with any good recipes that would be satisfying. And, my ex would not have eaten it (although he didn't eat with me and the kids anyway) neither would my kids. Ok. Those are all just excuses. I had sort of tried eating more veggies before but got sick of the same thing over and over and over.

Eating way more veggies and fruit was partly because of what I saw on Oprah with Dr Oz. The guests on the show (living past 100 years) ate veggies. I didn't see any processed food in the backgrounds. One guy was eating a diet called Calorie Restriction, which involves a lot of produce, and that was the guest that had my boyfriend interested. He asked if I would consider a Calorie Restriction diet mostly for the energy that the guest said he found. I thought about it and decided that it probably wouldn't work. I mean, I eat for emotional reasons so putting me on a restricted diet that I didn't choose would just cause me to eat boatloads of chocolate. That and the idea of counting calories makes me feel like I'm not getting enough food which would also cause the chocolate overload.

Some time ago I read the book In Defense of Food which also prompted this change in eating for me. The main message of the book is eat food, mostly plants, not too much. So eat real food that you can identify (not chemicals and ingredients you can't pronounce), eat vegetarian (meat is a condiment not a main course) and not too much (pay attention to your stomach's physical level of fullness). All of this made sense, but it seemed like too big of a task to completely switch my eating habits.

So today I went to Safeway and bought every fruit and veggie that looked good. As well, I bought some nuts, pita bread and hummus. I recently read that hummus can be used as a spread - I never thought of that! For my after-work snack I had a salad in a pita with hummus spread inside. It was so good! And mostly filling. I'm hungry now, but it's suppertime. I have the next four days off work and I plan to see if I can change my eating habits for the better. I plan on having fruit for breakfast with a little bit of nuts and Kashi cereal sprinkled on top and a bit of yogurt. Lunch can be another yummy pita salad. I don't know about supper yet. Today I'm making stir fry.

What I'm hoping for is the ability to eat a lot more fresh fruit and veggies and less processed stuff. I will most likely be consulting my computer for recipes a lot this weekend :)