You've probably heard all the buzz about natural food, and yeah yeah, 5 a day fruits and vegetables. Yadda yadda. I know you know ALL about it.

But, ARE YOU DOING IT?

Is it automatic or do you have to argue with yourself every time that craving for sweets or salty treats bombards your best intentions?

The reason we struggle with healthy eating is that humans are hard-wired to seek CONVENIENCE.

But I'm going to make this simple for you and show you a typical meal day and how to sneak your 5 fruits and veggies into things you are already planning on eating anyway.

I'm giving you an example of a typical and not entirely healthy diet so you can see how a few changes can make a big impact. (Of course, dressing up junk food is ultimately not the best way to get healthy, but it sure is a good start.)

The best way to cement a positive habit into your daily lifestyle is to make it convenient. I'll share some convenience tricks with you and then plot out how these can be tossed into your next meal.

CONVENIENT TRICKS

• Buy frozen berries in bulk for easy blending. You don't have to worry about spoiling and all the nutrients get preserved in the freezing process. Frozen fruit tricks your palate into thinking it's getting ice cream. Bonus!
• Keep bananas on hand to cream up a smoothie without needing ice cream. Bananas are a great fast food for on the go snacking.
• Assemble your salad right after getting home from the grocery store. Put it in a pretty bowl right in the center of your fridge so you see it first thing. This makes it easy to grab a handful for lunch. I HATE food prepping at every single meal, so I do it right after shopping so it's ready to grab and toss into a meal. If you're like me you want to eat NOW so get the healthy stuff prepped.
• Use dried fruit instead of sports energy chews during a hard workout, or roll them up into delicious homemade peanut butter bites.
• Buy applesauce and even baby food in the squeeze pouches. They go down so fast you can trick yourself into eating less common veggies and fruits like beets, squash, carrots, peas, etc. The brilliant baby food companies often pair veggies with sweeter fruits like apple and pear to make the veggies go down sweeter.
• Chard and spinach are SO easy to cook while you are making dinner, and they are mild in taste. Boil water and steam these power-packed greens for 1-2 minutes, add salt, olive oil, and basalmic vinegar and you've got your green power for the meal!
• Kale is my least favorite, but cooking it down until it's softer makes it blend better and taste less obvious in smoothies.
• Throw berries or sliced bananas on top of oatmeal or cereal or waffles.
• Juices are higher in concentrated sugar, but if you have a soda craving, just add seltzer water and lemon juice to your grape juice to make a substitute.