This week's nutritional challenge: Fill half your plate with veggies!!

Vegetables are generally low in fat, sugar and sodium and high in vitamins and minerals. This week's challenge is to fill half of your plate with veggies (and some fruits) at every meal and snack. (Perhaps start after breakfast, a 6am plate of broccoli doesn't sound too appealing right?). 

Here's my first meal of the challenge :)

Try to choose fibrous veggies rather than starchy ones, think green beans, summer squash, capsicum, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, artichoke, asparagus, buk choy, brussell sprouts, celery, cucumber, tomato, eggplant, fennel, lettuce, mushrooms, onion, radish, snow peas, carrots, spinach etc. The more variety, the better!


Of the other 50% of the plate, half of that should be filled with complex carbohydrates (this is where starchy veggies like potato and sweet potato come in as well as brown rice, wholemeal pasta, quinoa, whole grains) and the other half with lean protein (steamed fish, chicken/turkey breast, lean red meat etc). A small amount of healthy fat is important too. If you're not having oily fish with the meal, try and add a small amount of avocado, olive oil or fresh, unsalted nuts.


This will help you easily reach your "5 a day" of veggies, give you lots of energy and help keep that waistline trim!