Hi There,
Welcome back to the blog, we hope you had a fantastic week. We also hope you have been consistent on your efforts to losing weight and getting fit, because at the end of the day it is consistency that will make a difference on your journey. One great thing about consistency is that even if you fail on your conceived goal you are still winning, you are gaining knowledge, insights and experience which will propel you to do better when you try again the next day. The side rewards of consistency are implicit, and in most cases these are far more important than a one time visible result, they stay with you forever. Billy Jean King said “Champions keep playing until they get it right.” and Arnold Schwarzenegger said “Just as long as you do something every day”, these guys experienced and understood the power of consistency 🙂 .
Ooh vegetables, this week we would like to talk about some of the ways we have found to include vegetables on our diet. If you have been following this blog you would have realized that we are huge proponents of eating whole unprocessed foods as much as possible to improve our health and lose weight. Eating food in their natural state is what we recommend and what we strive to do daily amidst an ocean of processed foods and their accompanying forceful waves of advertising and marketing. The convenience of accessing and preparing processed foods renders the efforts of accessing and preparing whole foods useless and inefficient. This makes sense because as humans we are creatures of efficiency, our daily toil is congested with efforts of creating things that makes life easier. We strive to reduce resistance in our lives, and this has long spilled over into our kitchens.
Vegetables are crucial in establishing and maintaining our health, their benefits not only impacts our physical state but also our mental and emotional state. A quick search on the value of vegetables reveals both common and scientific repository that urges us to include vegetables daily on our meals. Vegetables consists of valuable nutrients, minerals, vitamins and also dietary fibre that is important for our gut health. Eating a variety of vegetable is a basic and easiest way to help us get our health in order as they help with managing blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and the prevention of heart diseases and cancers. And for us who are also concerned with weight management, vegetables are an indispensable part of our diet as they are very low in calories and rich in fibre, we can therefore eat quite a lot and feel full for longer, no guilty eating here 🙂 .
Vegetables are best grown and sourced from your own garden (oh how ideal), but this is near impossible for many. The next best option is to source vegetable from the local farmers market but this option is also not so possible for many. These two options are the best options to source vegetables because of the potential organic nature and environment they were grown in, as well as the least amount of processing, transportation and loss of nutrients associated with them. Vegetables lose nutrients through handling, transportation and exposure to the sun and other environmental elements, so it is better to have the least amount of time, exposure and handling from harvesting and consumption.
Since the first two options are not conducive for many, we are left with sourcing the vegetables from the supermarkets, either fresh or frozen which includes more handling and transportation. Then the least best option is buying our vegetables already cooked from the supermarket or restaurant, we say it is least best because although you are getting vegetables(a good thing) you do not necessarily know what ingredients were added in the cooking of the vegetables, such as sugar, salt, sauces(more sugar and salt), salad dressings(more sugar and salt) and other condiments which might be contrary to your health goals. It is better and empowering to prepare you own foods 🙂 as you know and control what goes into them.
On our weight loss journey, we have found that the best way to ensure that vegetables are included in our diet is preparing them in advance. We choose a day that is not so busy and cook meals that will cover us for the next 2 to 3 days. In doing this, we reduce the stress of thinking about food preparation or what to eat, we also eliminate the urge to conveniently grab easily accessible processed foods. Time is a rare commodity, especially now in our fast paced, forever occupied and constant chasing world :(, so preparing food in advance reduces the pressure and time spent in the kitchen. Allocating the time to prepare food in advance also have an added benefit of sharing quality time with your loved ones if you are not doing it alone and hey there is also something soothing about being in the kitchen when you have a rhythm going on 🙂 .
When there is really no time to prepare food in advance, we have found that the easiest way to include vegetables is by roasting them. We stock up on the already chopped fresh vegetable , add some spice and grill for about 20-30min and we have vegetables for a few more meals during the week, this has been a life saver for us.
Another simple method to include vegetables in your diet is to buy the washed and ready to cook pre-packaged roasted vegetables , add them in the microwave (including the bag) and cook for 5-6 minutes.
Frozen vegetable are also a good and quick option to include vegetables on your diet. Simply stock up on them and store in the freezer. When there is a need, pull them from the freezer, then steam (boil) them for 10-15 minutes .
That’s it for this week, Vegetables are fundamental to weight loss and crucial to our overall health and wellness, it is worth investing time and effort to ensure that they are a big part of our diet. Although they might not initially get much votes from our palates in comparison to processed foods, our perception of them needs to change as their benefits are far more tastier than their alternatives. We hope more vegetables will be added to your plate this week, until next week, stay blessed.
Kat & Tshepi
Kat & Tshepi 