The goal of the Happy Healthy Mama Healthy Year Challenge is to work on one specific health goal each month. Together, we are working for form habits that will stay with us and help us be our healthiest selves. I’m so happy that February is the Eat More Plants Challenge!
This is something I feel passionately about. No matter what diet or food philosophy you subscribe to, every person can benefit from eating more vegetables and fruits. Plant foods, especially vegetables and fruits are full of more phytonutrients than we can count and work in perfect synergy with our bodies to fight illness and keep us feeling our best. Also, when we add more plants to our diet, they are often taking the place of less desirable foods. Let’s work on eating more of what makes us feel great! 
The Eat More Plants Challenge
The purpose of today’s post is the help you plan how you will implement this challenge. It will likely look slightly different for each person. Here are some ideas to help you implement the challenge:
- Plan to eat 1-2 more plant-based (meatless) meals each week than you currently do.
- Keep track of how many vegetables and fruits you are eating and set a goal to reach each day.
- Eat a vegetable with every snack or meal.
- Eat one plant-based (vegan) meal each day.
- Eat totally plant-based (vegan) for the month.
- Eat totally meatless (vegetarian) for the month.
- Cut out one favorite “junk food” you eat often and replace it with a healthier, plant-based option.
Of course, there are countless ways you can implement the Eat More Plants Challenge, but these ideas should get you thinking!
You’re probably wondering how I’m planning to implement the challenge. First, I’m getting my family involved this month. I’m going to help them keep track of how many vegetables and fruit servings they are eating each day and help them set goals to reach or exceed the recommended daily amount. I made this chart to help us:
If you would like to have a free, printable version of this chart, make sure you are signed up for my newsletter. I’ll be sending out the printable version to my subscribers with my weekly newsletter tomorrow (Sunday) night!
Each pear represents a serving of vegetable or fruit, and a serving is equal to 1/2 cup. Serving recommendations, according to the USDA, vary by age and gender. Toddlers should aim for 2 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruit a day. Kids aged 4-8 should be getting 3 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruit. Tweens aged 8-13 are recommended to consume 4 servings of vegetables and 3 servings of fruit. Teen girls and women are similar with recommendations for daily vegetables to be 4-5 servings and fruits 3-4 servings. Teen boys and men should aim for 5-6 servings of vegetables a day and 4 servings of fruit. These are just the base recommendations, of course, and I think more is better!
In addition to keeping track of our vegetable and fruit intake, I am also planning on adding more plant-based dinners to our menu. Once upon a time I would cook meat once a week and every other meal was vegetarian or vegan, but lately it seems to be reversed. Now, this is partly because my thinking has changed and I think that animal products can add some value to our diet more than I used to. But I also think by making more plant-based meals my family (and me!) will naturally eat more vegetables, which is always a good thing. So I will focus on that for February.
I’m so excited to get this challenge started! I hope you are planning on joining me!
I love this! I know we can benefit from more plant based eating. However I think I’ll try to keep the animal products and instead substitute plants for grains and processed foods. I have dealt with my two preemies nutritional challenges for 4 years now and would like to add a little extra awareness for moms who deal with fatigue or adrenal and thyroid issues, and littles who have struggled with growth, both of which we have in our family. Animal products add a great variety of nutrients and fats that are often not replaced in large enough quantity when animal products are removed from the diet, especially of the pregnant /nursing mom or the young children.
Our nutritionist has seen so many children and infants recently that struggle with growth and even developing appropriately when animal products have been removed from their or their parents diet. Just as gluten free does not always equal healthy, neither does vegan! So I’m all for eating more plants, but please pay special attention that you are replacing lots of iron, b vitamins, minerals and good healthy fats (full fat dairy and farm eggs are great choices) if you remove other sources of nutrients.
Maryea maybe you could educate us more on this, maybe even a post on how to get essential nutrients from a plant based diet to help our littles. (I know I can improve on using more beans, legumes and lentils, and your recipes help with that a lot!) I love how focused you are on healthy good fats, and our nicu nutrition team even believes that 50-70% of all developmental delays in the first 3 years could be improved or resolved by a high (healthy) fat diet in the first years of a baby’s life. Our brains need fat to function, to learn and remember, and of course there are many other nutrients that matter too, but the trend toward vegan eating has in general been pretty hard on our infants and toddlers!
I am not cutting out all animal products. But when I first started this blog, 6 years ago (!!) I documented a month of vegan eating that Tim and I did to challenge ourselves. It was a great way to help me think of more ways to eat more plants and not rely so heavily on animal products in our diet. I suggested this because I think it can really change the course of a person’s diet by eating that way for a month. Not that they will necessarily be vegan at the end, but they will eat more servings of vegetables and other plants than they normally would.
I love your post idea and I will definitely consider it. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
I was looking for a challenge this month, and I am totally in! I’ve been eating vegetarian but would like to challenge myself to go vegan. Looking forward to the challenge!
I’m so glad you are going to join us!