Not Ready to Start

You understand that you need to make some changes so that your diet is contributing to your well-being, but you just can’t see yourself making the plunge to plant-based eating today.  That's alright, you can still get started making better choices to move toward more plant foods and less animal foods.  

Here are a few baby steps you can take to get started. 

1. Switch to Whole Grain

During our journey to plant-based eating, one of the first things we did was to start making rice with half white rice and half brown rice.  After a few weeks, we switched to just brown rice (and we have never gone back.)  Buy 100% whole wheat pasta.  Buy bread that has a lower total carbohydrate to fiber ratio; aim for 4 to 1.  (If your bread has 20 grams of total carbohydrates on the label, you want to see 5 grams of fiber. ) See this Instagram Story about picking bread.

2. Have Fruit at Every Meal

Longevity from an apple?  Research shows that adding one serving of fruit per day adds an average of 19 months life expectancy and the rate goes up with the number of servings of fruit.  The response rate goes down slightly after three servings of fruit, but those who ate no fruit lived three years shorter than those who at five servings.

3. Switch to Plant Milk

Soy, oat, and almond milk are all widely available and delicious.  Try them in all the ways you usually use milk - on cereal, in coffee, or with cookies.   An added bonus is that most of them can be purchased in shelf-stable packaging, so you can give them a try without worrying about taking up perishable food space in your refrigerator.  

A few other ideas to try:

• Start Lunch and Dinner with a Salad
• Adopt Meatless Monday
• Drink Hibiscus Tea
• Give Up Poultry
• Try Dates (or Date Sugar) for Baking