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Tips to help you eat more fruits and vegetables (if you’re a junk food addict)


I guess I could have titled this article “Confessions of a junk-food lover”.

I decided to write it because I’m a former fat, meat and fast-food lover who slowly became vegetarian and health conscious. There was a time I could spend weeks eating only meat, cheese, bread and fried potatoes. I was lucky (and lucid) enough to stop before I ever got fat, got high cholesterol or developed any form of diabetes.

I won’t go listing again the numerous proven health benefits of eating way more fruits and vegetables than the average occidental person does, as it’s pretty much a common knowledge that has been covered all over the place for years. Same goes for the dangers of eating too much fat and meat.

Starting to eat healthier foods hasn’t been an easy thing to do. I had never been used to eat much fruits or vegetables and had no clue how one could actually enjoy eating them. I can only be grateful having a vegetarian girlfriend who has kindly introduced me to new ways of enjoying that particular type of food.

There are two reasons why eating healthier can be difficult: habits, and pleasure.

Changing the way you eat means changing your habits. Your habits concerning what you buy at the store, concerning the choices of restaurants you go to, concerning what you order on the menu at school or at work, concerning what you’re looking for when you open your fridge. It will even change your family’s and friends habits when they invite you over for dinner. And we all know that changing habits is hard. Each and every time you do something a particular way, the involved neurons get wired more solidly so as to be able to keep doing it with less and less mental energy. Every time you repeat an action, it engraves a track a bit deeper in your brain, one from which it gets harder and harder to get out off. Still, with a bit of conscious thinking and concentration, it’s always possible to rewire your brain.

But changing your habits concerning the way you eat is even harder to do because there’s the pleasure factor that comes in the way, big time. If you enjoy the way you eat and keep eating that way, that’s because your brain releases satisfaction hormones (endorphins) whenever you ingest something you consider tasty. You may know how hard it is acquiring the habit of driving on the left side of the road when you go to Great-Britain, so imagine what it would be like if you had an orgasm every time you were driving on the right side like you always did back home? For sure, you wouldn’t be staying much on the left side, even knowing it’s dangerous. That’s exactly what happens with food. You’re used to having pleasure every time you eat and you’re going to have to take that into consideration before committing to changing habits.

If you eat something un-pleasurable, it won’t trigger anything in your brain. Would you have sex as often as you do if it was not a pleasurable activity? Actually, I doubt humanity would still exist in that case. With regards to food, you would do it once, twice, perhaps five times if you’re really willed, and then I guarantee you’ll go back to your fast-food even more cheerfully than you previously used to.

So, the most important thing to keep in mind when replacing your old junk food eating habits, it’s to replace them by healthy AND TASTY food eating habits. There’s no need to suddenly start ingesting raw dressing-free lettuce as if you were punishing yourself for bad eating. You won’t change any habit by being too hard on yourself. Instead, you better take several small but smart and consistent steps.

Below, I’m going to give you a few ideas on how to prepare your fruits and vegetables so they have a chance of triggering pleasure on your papillae. I’m not a good cook by any means, so I’m going to provide you only with a few tips and guidelines that worked for me. Feel free to explore for yourself different types of ethnic cooking, ask vegetarian friends for advice, do some recipe researching on the net or simply buy a good vegetarian cookbook. There are hundreds of them. Once you start enjoying fruits and vegetables prepared a certain way, you will sooner or later get a genuine taste for veggies and lose all interest in junk foods. That’s a 100% money back guarantee. To me it has only been a matter of trying eating vegetarian a couple of times a week during a few weeks. At that point, you’ll start having urges to eat any fruit or vegetable that crosses your way. You will do so, and discover that you will even have become able to enjoy some of them just plain raw or steamed, for their real taste, with no additional sauce, spice or cooking. Isn’t that nice? Of course you may not believe me. But I guess the only way to know about it is to try it for yourself, right.

So, the first step is preparing fruits and vegetable in a way that make them just as tasty as cakes or steaks. What’s the secret? Sugar, spices, salt, oil … It all depends on your personal preferences.

Fruits :

I would start by making smoothies.

Buy a combined mixer / blender. If you already own a mixer, then get a blender alone. For some reason, in my area blenders alone seem to be more expensive than combined mixers/blenders. I bought mine for 55 EUR (that’s 82 USD), whereas the cheapest blenders I found in my area cost around 90 EUR. So you might want to sell your old mixer on Ebay and get a combined one instead ;)

The mixer usually comes with a squeezer device. That’s the one we’re interested in. It will allow you to press oranges, granadilla, lime and other fruits of the sort. Oranges will usually be the base ingredients of your smoothies.

After squeezing the juice of a few oranges, pour it in the blender.

Peel and add bits of any fruit that you like. Lychees, bananas, kiwis, peers, pineapple, … virtually any fruit will do. Add a cup of water or soy milk to make it less thick, more easily drinkable. You can add ice cubes if you like your smoothies to be more refreshing.

Blend.

Pour in a glass.

Enjoy!

You will realize that smoothies, and therefore fruits, can fill you just like any other sort of aliment. The feeling of satisfaction will probably come a bit slower than when ingesting fat or glucose. It’s perfectly normal, as fructose (the type of sugar contained in fruits) is assimilated much slower than glucose. It’s only a matter of getting used to eating that way. During the course of a few weeks, I have developed the habit of eating one, two or three fruits whenever I feel a bit hungry, instead of a processed snack. You will want to try it too after falling in love with the delicious smoothies you’ll be making.

Vegetables :

Vegetables were the type of food I was most reluctant about. I suggest you take a good look at foreign cuisine. The Indians, Indonesians, Thais, Vietnamese, Moroccans all have nice ways of cooking vegetables, using a variety of spices. Go to a few restaurants, order vegetarian meals and don’t hesitate asking questions about their preparation. Most of the time, they will be VERY happy to find a whitey who’s genuinely interested in their home food.
Go find some recipes on the net. If you’re a good cook, don’t hesitate fiddling a bit with different new spices like cumin, curry, chili, clove, turmeric, cinnamon, saffron, cardamom, … But if you suck at cooking, just like I do, I kindly recommend you follow the recipes step by step… or get a girlfriend that cooks ;)

You can also try and prepare vegetables pies. Those are actually the ones I first discovered when I started eating more vegetables. Buy a ready-made pizza paste (or prepare one) and put various cooked veggies on it, like broccoli, mushrooms, tomatoes, a bit of mozzarella, add a lot of pepper, a bit of cumin, and put the whole thing in the oven for 20 minutes. It should be really tasty.

You may have other fun ideas. The important thing is for you to enjoy what you eat. If it’s a bit greasy, if there’s tons of cheese on it, at first it’s not a problem. Just focus on enjoying veggies. Then, when you’re used to it, try cooking them in a more healthy manner or try enjoying some of them uncooked.

Like you may have guessed, this article was not written by some kind of vegetarian/health extremist. I have enjoyed grease and meat for years and am not denying that. But it just happens so that at the time of writing, my meat intake has been decreasing for months, to the point that I haven’t felt the need to eat some (and thus haven’t done it) for 15 days in a row now. That’s a first. You see, it has been a slow process and I think it’s of prime importance not to be too hard on yourself. If you’re craving for a Big Mac, well it might just be that you’re very hungry. Try eating a banana and two clementines. If that doesn’t work for you, there’s no need to stay frustrated, as it will only associate bad feelings with the fact of not eating junk. So, do it, go eat your Big Mac. It’s ok. With time, these urges will disappear.

Vegetarian recipes
Go veg! Very interesting (and quite shocking) information about the meat you eat


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