I’ve worked in the Health and Fitness industry for almost fifteen years now and let’s be honest – every professional has their own take on how to eat effectively to achieve your health and fitness goals. To add to this buffet of advice, just look online or pick up a magazine and you’re bound to come across some new fad or diet. Whether it be Keto, Paleo, Vegan, Mediterranean, there appears to be no shortage of “ways” to eat.
In fact, being a “professional” myself, I get asked what I eat numerous times on a weekly basis. The answer is never an easy one for me because I know that everyone has different constraints on their lifestyle ranging from different budgets to different exercise schedules. In other words, what diet works best for me may not be the best for someone else.
Personally, I’ve no interest in counting calories or counting macronutrients (what are those??). I’m exceptionally in tune with my body and what it needs to eat to make myself feel good and optimise my own performance.
I also have my family – specifically my kids – that influence the way I eat. They challenge any food “rules” and place new boundaries on what can or cannot be cooked at home. My main goal at home is to make sure that my family eats a well balanced and varied diet. This definitely makes cooking at home anything but boring – I’m rarely cooking the same thing twice in a row and my kids almost always get a different answer to the question “What’s for dinner tonight, Mom?”.
I’m grateful that we haven’t had to deal with allergies or intolerances in our little family so we haven’t had to think twice about introducing foods to our kids. Don’t get me wrong, though. My kids definitely have their favourites and can easily fall into routines. However, I seem to have mastered the frequency of introducing them to new foods and dishes so they have an awesome list to choose from.
I also try to simplify the concept of variety for my kids by telling them that we should try to eat the rainbow on our plates (and no, that doesn’t mean picking out colours from the pack of gummy snacks in the cupboard!).
Scientifically, the array of colours found in various fruit and vegetables are caused by specific phytonutrients, which are natural chemicals that help protect plants from germs, bugs, the sun’s harmful rays, and other threats. The variety of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables have enormous healing powers.
By feeding our bodies a variety of colors, it therefore means we have access to more of these healing powers and hopefully better protection against nasties like inflammation, heart disease, organ deterioration, lowered immunity, or memory loss.
Given all that, it’s no surprise the rainbow is my diet of choice!
Here at Minifarms, our aim is to inspire you to explore the colourful and wonderful world of fruit and vegetables. This may be as simple as adding a new produce item to your basket every fortnight. While that may seem really small, you’ll be exploring more than twenty five new items over the span of a year! That’s a whole lot of colourful goodness your body will love and we’d love to help with that! Click here to sign up for our weekly fruit box or here for some recipes based on those colourful fruits and veggies!
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