Weekly Challenge: Fruit-a-licious

Here's to wrapping up a week of 15-minute wins and "eating the frog" first! I told my husband about the "eating the frog first" principle a couple of weeks ago and he's really liked applying it. It made me smile when we were in the car on Thursday and he said "I only have 1 frog left to eat this week." :D It really is an effective way to get more done in the day, by simply getting the task you really don't want to do, out of the way first. If you didn't have a chance to try it, give it a try this week!

So... I love fruit.

How about you? I love it so much that it's actually really easy for me to "overdo it." That may sound silly but what I mean by that, is I can eat so much fruit that I don't leave room for other very nutritious and important foods at meal times, especially the veggies.

I used to go to the grocery store and half-way through shopping, would look down and notice that my whole cart was full of fruit, with much fewer veggies. Sure, it's better than buying a bunch of cookies, donuts, and ice cream but over-consuming fruit can still slow you down if you're currently focused on fat-loss. Maintaining where you are at, is of course, an entirely different story.

Okay, so we often hear that we need to "eat more fruits and vegetables" and this is definitely true but I think that general statement needs a little bit of clarification.

In my opinion, vegetables and fruit don't belong in the same general category. Both are nutritious and can provide many nutrients for nourishing our bodies but we definitely should be eating more vegetables than fruit in a day. If you are at all like me, the blanket statement of needing to "eat more fruits and vegetables" will likely end up in the action of just eating more fruit. Result... fat-loss slowed (unless you're doing some pretty intense training/exercise and need the extra calories).

I've mentioned it before, but the ratios of servings of fruit to vegetables should be something close to 1:4 or 1:5. So to be sure we're clear here, that means one serving of fruit to every 4 or 5 servings of vegetables. How are you doing on this ratio? An easier way to stick to this ratio, is to eat fruit for dessert. So that's the challenge for the week. Instead of just eating fruit whenever, eat it for your "dessert."

Think you can do it? Fruit has such amazing, natural sweetness, that it certainly can taste like a treat (especially organic strawberries...mmmm!). What is your favorite fruit to eat for dessert? I really love a little bowl of fresh berries or an apple or banana with almond butter. Mmm!