It shouldn’t be so difficult to eat fruit everyday right? Just make sure you buy them, place them very visibly on the dinner table in a nice fruit bowl, and every time you feel a bit hungry, you’ll naturally grab one of these healthy snacks laying right in front of you. Right?
Eh… I don’t know about you guys, but it didn’t work for me this way. Instead of a colorful, tasty snack collection, our fruit bowl became more of a fruit deathbed. Sunny yellow bananas changed into black, smelly boomerangs. Apples red as rubies ended up as dull, mushy balls of compost. And our oranges always worked on a nice, white tan. Our appealing fruit became appalling. Every single time. And not even because I dislike fruit. I just like other food better, I guess. I don’t know, all I know is that I forgot to eat the fruit every single time. Oh, the times I had to throw yet another bunch of vitamins into the compost bin. At one point, I stopped buying fruit altogether. Apparently, we weren’t meant to be.
But then I wanted to accomplish all these life changing goals. I decided to become a healthy person. I even planned on losing a lot of weight. But these things cannot possibly be accomplished when fruit is banned from the grocery list, right? So naturally, I came up with goal no. 41: Eat 2 portions of fruit every day for a month. Do this three times. I actually started this goal the very day I started my Day Zero Project: on 29-10-2014. That’s 5,5 months ago. So what happened?
Again, I forgot. It would go fine for a couple of weeks. But then suddenly a day went by without any thoughts of apples, grapes or strawberries. This demotivated me so much every time, that I didn’t bother start eating fruit again the day after. Until one day I realized I needed another strategy.
Apparently, just remembering to eat two pieces of fruit daily didn’t work for me. I had to make this more interesting. Because frankly I don’t care a lot about plain raw apples, pears or mandarins. And in the Netherlands, that’s pretty much the kind of fruit you’re being forced to eat in winter, if you don’t want to spend your monthly salary all at once. When I was trying to think of ways how to make my daily fruit intake more appealing, I suddenly had four epiphanies.
– There’s lots of yummie fruit in the supermarket freezers, which you can buy at a reasonable price. Were talking strawberries, raspberries and even mangos here!
– Why should I eat my fruit boringly raw? I could also cook it, bake it or spice it up (cinnamon!).
– Why should fruit always be eaten in-between meals? If I’d incorporate it into my meals, I wouldn’t have to worry about remembering to eat some anymore!
– Why should I always have to eat my fruit? Drinking it also gets it into my stomach, right? I’m not talking about the factory-made fruit juices with lots of sugar and no vitamins left, of course. I own a perfectly good blender. It even has a button which has the word smoothie on it! So what stops me from making them, then?
Nothing! At least, not anymore! Because for an entire month (and three days, to be exact), I have been cooking, blending and — most importantly — actually consuming my fruit! My breakfast now usually consist of a bowl of cruesli, low-fat vanilla yogurt and banana slices. For my lunch, I often bake myself a goats cheese and apple toast. Or I will drink a homemade smoothie during the day, which contains only fresh (and frozen) fruit. Even the orange juice I press myself! And of course I also ate a handful of strawberries or a small bowl of grapes as a snack from time to time. But the difference is: now it is a snack because I want it to be, not because it has to be.
Too be very honest, even these last thirty days I forgot to eat my second piece of fruit one day. I wondered if I should start all over again from that point. But then I remembered how demotivating that felt in the past. I didn’t want to risk losing my good new habit again. So I decided I would compensate and eat at least three portions of fruit the day after. If I would succeed, I would just continue with my goal. If I would fail another consecutive day, I would start over. I succeeded. And not only that day. Lots of days I ate more than two pieces of fruit, voluntarily. Especially when I make smoothies! That’s a complete fruit party!
I can’t think of not eating fruit anymore now. How have I lived all these years without? I still have to continue for two more months to fully complete the goal. But I believe that shouldn’t be a problem from now on anymore.
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