Colorful Summer Salad

I know I need to eat more fruits and vegetables.  So this weekend, I decided to make a fruit salad that would be handy for snacking.  I used watermelon and blueberries (because a friend recently told me they were great together) and grapes (because my mom was in town visiting and had some left from her drive).  The result was a beautiful and refreshing fruit salad!

The colors make the salad so pretty and much more enjoyable to eat.   But there's more - colors of fruits and vegetables are natures way of telling us what health benefits that particular fruit or vegetable has.

Based on some info I got from an article in Taos News, this salad has the following health benefits :

Grapes - Green produce indicates antioxidant potential and may promote healthy vision and reduce cancer risks.

Blueberries - Purple and blue produce may have antioxidant and anti-aging benefits and may help with memory, urinary tract health, and reduced cancer risks.

Watermelon - Red produce may help maintain a healthy heart, vision, immunity and my reduce cancer risks.

Fruits and Veggies

I haven't been perfect, but I've certainly been more motivated to workout since I set the goal of a half ironman and hiking to Macchu Picchu.  With all the workouts, I have found that I am even more tired than normal.  The problem is that I eat horribly.  I'm not really a fruit and vegetable kind of gal.  I think they look beautiful in the store.  But too often I buy them with good intentions just to find them rotting a week later because I forgot to eat them. And yet the food I buy that could last for decades because of the additives and preservatives is gone within a week.  Today I went to Sprouts Farmer's Market - a new grocery store near me that sells organic and healthy food and local produce.  Just walking into the store made me feel twenty times healthier.  I wonder if making regular visits to Sprouts will cause healthy eating habits to take over my not so healthy ones?

If I am going to continue to train and get to the best shape of my life, I’ve got to give my body the nutrition it needs.  So for the next couple weeks, I'm going to focus on getting more fruits and vegetables in my diet.  The food pyramid suggests 3-5 servings of vegetables and 2-4 servings of fruit a day.  However since there are days that I have had 0 fruit and 0 vegetable servings for the day I think I will start with a goal of 3 fruit or vegetable servings each day and work my way up from there.

Lat week, I had an interesting conversation with my cousin Anna (she has run a half marathon and completed a triathlon).  She was asking me for advice on putting more fruits and veggies in her diet.  Really Anna, do you think I’m the one to offer advice in this area? Shockingly I had several suggestions for her:

• make fruit smoothies for breakfast
• cut up vegetables (like sweet potatoes, onions, squash) and bake them with rosemary or other spices
• carrots or broccoli with hummus for a snack
• raw snap peas for a snack
• make a soup (8 can soup is one of my favs)

So, now I need to take my own advice!  Do you have any other suggestions for me?