Easy Ways To Eat More Vegetables Every Day

12th Jun 2019

It’s Healthy Eating Week here in the UK and as a nutritionist, it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that I have many conversations each day about food and nutrition. There seems to be a recurring theme in these conversations: so many of us are very confused about what to eat.  

Every week, there seems to be a new study talking about the benefits of a certain food that had been previously vilified. Is fat good? Which carbohydrates should I eat? How do I know how much protein to eat? For many people, nutrition and healthy eating seem to be very complicated.

In conversations like this, I like to go back to basics and get people focusing a few things that will boost their energy levels throughout the day and help them feel better. One of these simple things is to eat more vegetables.

However, it’s not enough to say, just eat more vegetables and leave people to it. Most of us know the benefits of eating vegetables. What most of us really want to know is how they can apply the idea of eating more vegetable in a practical way into their day to day lives.

Here are a few practical ways to add more vegetables into your daily diet:

1. Find one meal and look at how you can add an extra portion of vegetables. This is an interesting way of taking a goal of eating more vegetables and breaking it down into something a little more relevant and realistic. For example, if you eat a fruit smoothie for breakfast, could you add a handful of spinach or kale? If you have soup for lunch, could you grate some carrot on top or add a handful of rocket?
2. Swap your snacks: instead of snacking on biscuits or crisps during the day, could you chop up a few carrots or some broccoli and snack on that with some hummus, tzatziki or baba ganoush? Could you make up a tray of kale crisps and snack on those instead?
3. Give yourself the challenge of trying a new vegetable every week. As we head into the summer, there are a huge variety of vegetables in the supermarket, so you’re spoilt for choice! Choose a ‘new to you’ vegetable on your next supermarket trip and have fun finding a new recipe to cook it with.

Here’s a quick reminder if this sounds like too much: a portion of veg is only 80g! This is the equivalent of half of a medium avocado, half a red pepper, 4 heaped tablespoons of spinach, 7 slices of beetroot. Add some feta/salmon/lentil, a bit of olive oil and salt & pepper and you’ve got yourself a little salad!

Healthy eating doesn’t need to be complicated if you take things back to basics. Eating lots of vegetables and drinking lots of water are two great places to start!

–

This is a Guest Post by Le’Nise Brothers.

Le’Nise Brothers is a registered nutritionist, yoga teacher and women’s health, hormone and menstruation coach in private practice at Brighter Spaces in Islington. She works with women who want to get control of sugar cravings, mood swings and hormonal acne, bloating and headaches, as well as increase their energy levels.

Le’Nise has helped many women with hormonal issues ranging from PMS, PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, heavy, painful, missing & irregular periods, post-natal depletion, perimenopause and menopause. 

She set up her practice Eat Love Move to help empower and educate women to understand their bodies, advocate for better healthcare and heal.