Habit Transformation Challenge: Your 4th Habit

Eat Your Greens Reds Purples Oranges Challenge

Prepared by: Dr. Kushairi Zuradi

Introduction

We are using the slow change method to make a lifelong impact in your life. Follow this habit transformation basics first prior to starting your challenges.

This is our 4th habit challenge – to eat more greens and other colorful and amazing vegetables!

Missed the first 3 challenges? You can start with your first, second and third challenge.

Vitamins and minerals are vital for life and must be obtained from the diet.

Although we get these nutrients from most of the foods we eat, colorful fruit and vegetables contain the most.

This habit challenge encourages you to eat fresh vegetables with every meal.

Habit Challenge: Eat fresh vegetables in every meal

By eating a wide variety of fruit and vegetables, you’ll get a ton of micronutrients, also known as vitamins and minerals.

These are potent, indispensable compounds that make your body work properly. They boost our health and vitality while promoting growth, reproduction and energy.

Just as ‘macro’ was given to the term to suggest the majority, ‘micro’ is given to this set of nutrients to suggest a much lower quantity.

The more handfuls of spinach, sides of carrots or pieces of fruit you eat daily, the more effectively you are improving your body. By simply eating fresh fruit and vegetables, you get heaps of calcium for your bones, iron for your blood and vitamin C for your immune system.

You do this by adding nutrient-dense leafy greens, seasonal vegetables, fruit and berries to your plate at every meal. It will make you feel sharper, stronger and more capable than ever. ↓

Making it yours

How Can I Personalize This Habit?

Choose which sources of fruit and vegetables you would like to eat, and in what quantities.

If you never have fruit or vegetables with meals, then start with a small portion each meal.

If you’re used to eating a lot of fruit and veg, then focus on increasing your consistency to eating the recommended portion sizes each meal.

How Can I Make This Habit Easy?

The first step is to scale the habit to something you are 90-100% confident you can do for 6 days of the week. You might want to track specific meals (just breakfasts, lunches, or dinners), or decide that journaling on paper is easier than an app for you.

Have one day off per week from completing the habit.

This is very important: whatever you pick, it should only take you one to two minutes to complete each day.

What Can I Piggyback Off Of?

It’s likely the existing trigger to eat something will be the cue for this habit. It could also be linked to meal preparation if you like to bulk cook for days ahead. Just pick a pre-existing habit to use as your reminder.

TO DO: Create your personal version of the habit to commit to this challenge!

Here’s a template:

I am 90-100% confident that I will [insert habit] for 6 days a week after I [insert what you're going to piggyback off of].

Here’s an example:

I am 90-100% confident that I will record what I eat on paper for 6 days per week after I finish my last meal of the day.
P.S. Don’t worry about making this perfect.

Vitamins and minerals (also known as micronutrients) are vital for life.

Most vitamins and minerals are classified as essential, as the body cannot synthesize them so they must be obtained from the diet.

Although we get these nutrients from most of the foods we eat, some foods have more vitamins and minerals than others.

Most of the time, these micronutrients are found within the macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs) we eat, as they are important in the metabolism of those macronutrients.

There are two classifications of vitamins: water-soluble and fat-soluble.

There are a number of key characteristics that separate the water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins, but the clues are in the name. Water-soluble vitamins are broken down in water and excreted easily if required. The possibility of toxicity is low as a result.

With the fat-soluble vitamins, excess tends to be stored in fat storage sites and there is therefore higher risk of toxicity.

Deficiency symptoms are much slower to develop with fat-soluble vitamins than water soluble ones.

Thankfully, the minerals aren’t so complicated, and they are simply classified as inorganic substances (this means they aren’t alive).

Important

So, mind your micros!

Let’s summarize three important facts:

Micronutrients are all natural compounds found in food
They are essential nutrients to the body for important functions such as growth, repair, protection and reproduction
Deficiency can occur when micronutrient consumption is reduced or limited

Scientists have investigated the possibility that large doses of certain vitamins and minerals will help stave off chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease. This work is leading to exciting findings and future recommendations.

Here’s what we are currently sure of: with a deficiency of micronutrients, athletic performance and general health markers are reduced.

This is a way of continuing it with less of a focus.

At the end of the ‘Eat vegetables with every meal’ habit challenge. As you prepare to move onto the next habit challenge, you’ll want to put this current habit into ‘habit maintenance mode.’

By now, the habit should start to become more automatic if you’ve been at least a little consistent. You don’t need reminders to start the habit, and it’s feeling a bit easier, more part of your ‘normal.’

So as you begin to move your focus to the next habit challenge, all you want to do is not forget about this habit. You don’t need to keep track of it every day, as long as things are going well.

But every few days, pause and reflect on this habit and check in to see that everything is still going well. Maybe once a week, use one of our Sunday reflection sessions to assess whether you have any obstacles around this habit, need to make adjustments, learned anything new.

After a while, you need to reflect on the habit less often, as it becomes ingrained in your life.