{"id":36431,"date":"2017-09-25T06:44:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T10:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/?p=36431"},"modified":"2021-02-10T17:52:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T22:52:14","slug":"how-not-to-die-spoiler-eat-more-veggies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/how-not-to-die-spoiler-eat-more-veggies\/","title":{"rendered":"How Not to Die (Spoiler: Eat More Veggies)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Where do you find your healthy living motivation? For me, it’s a lot of places. Blogs and social media, the ladies and trainers at Burn Boot Camp<\/a>, friends, books, my own realization of how good I feel when I’m taking care of my physical health, and my family.<\/p>\n I’m grateful to have two parents who have modeled healthy living and moderation for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I remember going to watch them play tennis on the regular, my mom always had a vegetable of some sort with dinner (unless she was baking cookies for dinner, which happened every now and then too), and now they both still stay busy with 20+ mile bike rides, long walks, and good food (with a martini thrown in here and there for good measure).<\/p>\n Let me back up real quick- this past weekend, my parents came to visit!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was so nice to have them here for a relaxed visit. We filled the time with games (the girls are so into board games right now), football watching (GO DAWGS!), walking around the neighborhood garage sales, and even an early fall boat ride.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The relaxed schedule left plenty of time for hanging out and chatting. One thing I really got into talking to my mom about was a book she’s been reading called How Not to Die<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This uplifting title (lol<\/em>) is a New York Times Best Seller by Dr Michael Greger<\/a> and it’s now on my list to dig into at some point. However, just talking to my mom about it invigorated me. His work (to my understanding) focuses largely on the benefits of whole food, plant-based eating, backed by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. I don’t think I actually ever heard the word vegan, but it sounded to be in that arena.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We eat a lot of vegetables in my house, but I’ve experimented off and on with a more paleo-style of eating, which focuses on whole foods, but eliminates beans, dairy, and grains among other things. To be clear, I have never eliminated anything (I eat it all- #moderation) but have leaned that way with my eating.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The thing with eating paleo-ish is that it does call for a lot of meat. I like meat, but sometimes I felt like it was a little more than my liking (eggs for breakfast, turkey for lunch, chicken for dinner, etc). Also, buying the quality cuts of meat is expensive<\/em>. Buying it for a family of four is even more so.<\/p>\n Anyway, talking to mom about how she’s transitioned into a more plant-based way of eating (she isn’t committed to a label of any sort) got me jazzed up about trying more plant-based meals for our family too. Being that I’ve been half-assing my meal plans lately (a busy summer was my excuse but here we are a month into our fall schedule…<\/em>), it was just the boost I needed to feel re-energized about cooking and food.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sunday morning we sat on the porch, perusing cookbooks and blogs, and I made a more veggie-focused meal plan for the week. In fact, 5 out of the 6 meals I planned are vegetarian, which is a decent switch up from our 1-2 vegetarian dinners a week. We started last night with Angela’s Golden Red Lentil Dal<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The smell of curry, the taste of coconut milk- so good! The whole fam agreed. I just have to remember to chop the spinach in small pieces for Kaitlyn and make a little more rice next time too. Anyone else sometimes struggle with a recipe being enough to feed the whole family?<\/p>\n I’m looking forward to trying it out this week and will report back to you with the meals we tried, my family’s feedback, challenges and successes. I asked for some veggie-inspiration of Instagram <\/a>and you guys offered some great suggestions, like My New Roots<\/a>, Minimalist Baker<\/a>, Cookie and Kate<\/a>, among others. I really appreciate the recommendations and if you have a veggie-focused resource you love, please send it my way!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I got my workout in early this morning and am going to cook up some steel cut oatmeal. It feels good to have this renewed energy and health buzz pumping through my veins!<\/p>\n Where do you find your healthy living motivation?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where do you find your healthy living motivation? For me, it’s a lot of places. Blogs and social media, the ladies and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":36429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2284,2240],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ahealthysliceoflife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}