I took a drive this weekend to visit some family, part of which was spent visiting with my grandma for a couple of hours.
During our visit we caught up on a variety of topics – the state of the world, washing our hands and of course, vegetables.
She had seen a recent post I wrote on Facebook detailing my recommendations for cleaning up your diet by focusing on eating more vegetables and she had a few questions for me.
You see, in that post I mentioned how one very simple way to clean up your diet is to simply focus on eating 7-9 “fist sized” portions of vegetables each day, or 2-3 “fists”/meal (you can see this post here).
She was first wondering how a person would eat that amount of vegetables. To clarify, I explained the reasonings behind my recommendation – psychological manipulation 😉
Let’s pull back the curtain, shall we…
The 7-9 “fists”/day recommendation is a very loose guideline and truthfully anything above 4-5 “fists”/day is going to be a big win for most people. However, this is all about cleaning up your diet and if you’re aiming to eat 7-9 “fists” of vegetables, there’s a very good chance you’re not going to be eating as much “other” food.
Also, knowing human nature, I know most people will overestimate the amount of vegetables they’re eating. Meaning if they tell me they’re eating 7-9, there’s a very good chance they’re really only eating 4-5, which as mentioned above is still a very big win and probably adequate for most people.
On the flip side, if I were to recommend the standard 4-5 “fists”/day of vegetables, going with the same understanding of human nature that would mean most people are actually only getting 1-3 “fists”/day and continuing to eat just as much “other” food as they were before, leading to no change.
So, I aim on the high side for my recommendations because it’s a win/win – you’re definitely not going to overdose on vegetables if you eat too many and if you come up a little bit short, you’re still good 👌.
Keep in mind, my recommendations come through the lens of overall health and typically weight loss as that’s the goal of most people I work with. If that’s not what you’re looking for, the recommendations may be different.
There you have it, a peak behind the curtain. Don’t tell anyone 🤫Â
