3 Ways To Add Plant Based Meals To Your Food Plan

This is a goal of mine: to include plant-based meals in my in my meal plan. So what is a plant-based diet? It includes everything that's plant-based!

Vegetables, fruit, beans, legumes, seeds, nuts, and whole grains. And one of the things I want to mention here is perhaps you've heard about 'eat the colors of the rainbow,' eat 10 colors of food a day, and it's really true.

Those colors have a lot of flavonoids and carotenoids that really support our bodies and our health. So the most famous plant-based diet is the Mediterranean diet.

What does it include? Vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, beans, seeds, and nuts. But it also includes olives and really good fat. So avocados, olive oil, that sort of thing. We need fat. Fat enhances our satiety. We have good flavor there and it also gets us full.

The Mediterranean diet also includes fish, poultry, meat, eggs, dairy, and on occasion, meat and some sweets.

So why should we do follow a plant-based diet or at least include plant-based meals in our intake? Well, first of all, they contain a lot of nutrients that really aren't found anywhere else, like certain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals.

They also help us maintain a healthy weight. They reduce inflammation, they help get rid of toxins, and they support our immune function. They also decrease the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and the risk of getting frail in older adults.

The final benefit to having a plant-based diet is that it really improves our bowel function. So why is that important? Well, that is the main way that we get rid of toxins. Soluble and insoluble fiber is so important. The insoluble fiber sort of scrapes and cleans the inside of the colon, and the soluble fiber absorbs water and makes for good healthy bowel movements.

So how do we do it? How would I incorporate that? Well, you could just jump in and throw out your current diet and start eating vegetables and fruit all the time. I can pretty much guarantee that won't work unless you have a very, very deep desire to do that. But what you can do is look at your plate and you can say, okay, well, this part down here is usually my vegetables. And this big piece over here is usually my animal protein meat, or chicken or whatever.

So turn that around a little bit. Make it so that at least two thirds of your plate has vegetables, and any of these other things, beans or legumes, that kind of thing, and a smaller portion is your protein, your animal protein. That's one way to do it.

Another way is to incorporate it in say three or four meals during the week, and do it that way. Or you can just follow a Mediterranean diet.

Any way you go, the more fruits and vegetables and plant-based foods you include in your diet every day, the better you'll feel and the healthier you'll be.

If you'd like to talk more about this, or if you have questions, click here. This will take you to my website and you can schedule a health chat.

Thank you so much for listening.

Dr. Elaine.

This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the medical advice of your doctor or healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider for advice about a specific medical condition.