How Can Eating Become a Way to Celebrate?

Hi Fabulous Traveler,

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

This quote from Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food encompasses The Fabulous approach in terms of healthy nutrition. We’re against intricate and restrictive dietary approaches that make life less enjoyable.

Who wants to count each calorie of food for the rest of their life?

Fabulous Traveler, welcome to a 21-day journey in good nutrition where you will celebrate quality food and healthy eating, balanced meals, and even some sugar from time to time.

Let’s Start by Dispelling Dieting Myths

Most restrictive diets don’t work because they ask you to count calories and to reduce the amount of food you’re eating.

These diets deprive you. You have to exercise your willpower every single time you’re going to eat.

Who wants to struggle through life like this?

The right approach is to see meals as a celebration, a time to indulge yourself in fresh fruits and vegetables, a time to forget about daily stress, and renew your energy with good food and good company.

Fabulous Traveler, during this journey, you will learn eight easy food rules that will help you consistently make good choices.

Consider these as your own north stars. They will pop up in your head next time you’re in the supermarket looking tentatively at a big bag of chips.

The Clean Sweep

The clean sweep is one of the most powerful ways to kick off your healthy eating habits. It’s a ritual telling yourself and your family that things are going to change from now on. Choose a day to transform your house into a healthy food home:

• Go through all of the food shelves and storage and remove all sugary drinks, cookies, candies, and processed cereals.
• Why don’t you take your family or go by yourself to a restaurant that serves healthy food? This will make you remember the commitment you made to yourself.
• After lunch, it's time to go shopping for some real food to replace everything you tossed.

When I say “real food,” I mean natural food, not the highly processed stuff you find popping out at eye-level on the shelves of the supermarket.

Always keep your eyes open for fresh fruits and veggies.

Your First Food Rule

To quickly distinguish processed food from real food, just look at the list of ingredients. If you see that there are more than five ingredients, you can be sure that this food is highly processed and unhealthy.

Highly processed foods can be kept for a long time, which means that they are more profitable to manufacturers and supermarkets than natural food, which tends to spoil quickly.

If you were to come up with a chart, the quicker the food can spoil, the healthier it is because it is still packed full of nutrition.

Only buy food that doesn't have more than five ingredients.

This Week's One Habit

For this week, you need to eat one serving of fresh fruit and one serving of vegetables every day.

You can either have it with your breakfast, lunch or dinner, but make sure to eat at least one delicious serving of fruits and vegetables.

Two things to remember:

• The more veggies and the greater the variety, the better.
• Eat plenty of fruits of all colors.

Ready for the challenge? Tap on "I Accept," and the "Eat Fruits & Vegetables" habit will be added to your Afternoon Routine.

Fabulous Traveler, I hope you’re as excited as I am about learning to enjoy quality food!

Next week, we’re moving on to talk about breakfast, and then after that, we'll discuss what makes up a healthy meal.

Fabulous Traveler, best of luck for this week,