Organized Mommy Super Food Challenge

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One of my goals for the new year is to eat healthier. I would love for all of you to join me in this endeavor!

I've been thinking a lot about how to accomplish healthy eating in a way that will change my eating habits for the long run. No fad diets here! In approaching these kinds of goals, I know that certain tactics do and don't work for me. I don't do well with diets that "outlaw" all sorts of foods. I'm just not good with "don't". As soon as someone tells me that I can't have ice cream, it's all I can think about! So, if eating better means "don't eat this" or "don't eat that", I know it will not work for me.

What does work for me is to concentrate on the "dos". So, my tactic for eating better is to fill my diet so full of healthy food, that I won't have much room for the bad stuff. To eat healthier, I am going to focus on what I *should* eat rather than what I shouldn't.

To make sure that these healthy eating habits really stick, I want to do this in a series of small changes. Taking a cue from Simple Mom I want to approach this goal slowly like a Tortoise. And, according to Leo over at Zen Habits, it takes about 1 month to really seal in a new habit.

So, I am going to focus on one new healthy food each month. During that month, I will work on incorporating that one food into my regular diet. I'm not going to go overboard, eating *only* that food. Rather, I will find ways of incorporating that food into my regular eating patterns, so that it becomes just a normal part of my eating habits. After 12 months, I will have 12 new healthy foods solidly incorporated into my regular diet.

Now, to the question of "what foods?". If you Google "super food" a surprising number of great resources pop up (see the Further Reading list at the bottom of this post). What's even more surprising to me is that there is a lot of overlap in these lists. Experts really do agree on what the super food are.

Here is my list of 12 super foods that I will incorporate into my diet - one per month:

Jan) Sweet potatoes (wrap-up)

Feb) Oats and Buckwheat (wrap-up)

Mar) Nuts

Apr) Broccoli

May) Avocado

Jun) Blueberries

Jul) Salmon

Aug) Garlic

Sep) Green Tea

Oct) Spinach

Nov) Yogurt

Dec) Lentils

Here's how the challenge will work:

1) On the first Friday of each month, I will post the new super food for the month along with a few ideas about how I will incorporate this food into my everyday diet.
2) I will post a Mr Linky where you can link to your post about how you will incorporate this food, or any good recipes you have that use this ingredient. Feel free to also just leave a comment!
3) On the last Friday of the month, I will round up with some of the best ideas (and maybe a prize if I can get myself organized for it - no promises here; I'll see what I can do.)

I will start next Friday with the January super food: Sweet Potatoes. I hope you will join me!
Check back in next Friday, or better yet, subscribe to my feed so that you won't miss a thing!

Further Reading:
* 10 Foods that Pack a Wallop
* Dr. Perricone's 10 Super Foods
* Woman's Day 10 Perfect Foods
* WebMD Superfoods
* NuVal Food Scoring System