Samantha and I were on the phone strategizing her stepped up fitness plan.  With some important events on the calendar and long term health goals, Samantha had asked me for coaching on how to tweak her diet, exercise, and mindset practices to meet her goals of weight loss, energy, and physical confidence.

An action taker, she’d jumped right into my Fast Start program to do just that.  Samantha was already on board with a plant-based diet. She just needed help with strategies, specifics, and accountability.

Samantha L. Robinson, CLU, ChFC Development Consultant

One of the best strategies for success that I can advise to women is to be prepared with the foods that are going to move you toward your goals.

What you have is what you’ll eat, right?

And what better way to work with that than to have those colorful crudites – cold sliced and prepped veggies – ready to go!?

If we wait until we’re tired, hungry, or otherwise out of sorts, the fast food fix that doesn’t take any time often prevails.

My assignment for Samantha?  Get your veggie tray prepped and FULL!  Tonight!

It wasn’t long before I received an email from Samantha with a proud, beautiful colorful picture of her food tray.  That is what you see here today.

I wrote Samantha right back with stars all over her chart, yet also asked, how come the veggie compartments are half empty?  Is that because you’d already eaten a lot before you got the picture taken?

Samantha’s Superfoods Tray

Here was Samantha’s reply:

Yes, they were full when I left for the store, but came back to half empty – my son put a whackin’ on ’em 😉  It worked out great because I munched on them throughout the afternoon and was never super hungry so that I was tempted to eat something “bad”.  I’m going to set it up again today, though there’s not much left from yesterday, so I’ll need to make a grocery store run…My son is really good with veggies, and he asked me this morning to get it refilled for him to eat when he gets home from school 🙂  Olivia would only eat zucchini without skin on it and carrots, but hey, that’s a start!  She’s my fruit girl – eats blueberries, bananas, and strawberries by the bowlful!

Samantha’s down 5.5 lbs 

Not surprisingly, Samantha’s weight is down 5.5 lbs and continues its descent.  She’s following one of the first rules of slim:  Lots of high nutrient, high water content vegetables, in advance of more concentrated fare, to keep calorie density at a level consistent with a hearty appetite AND your body composition goals.

If it looks good, eat it!

Does this ever happen to you?  You get so busy that you don’t notice your hunger sneaking up.  And by the time you notice it, it has hit you HARD and the ‘healthy’ stuff can not only be the furthest from your mind, yet also it can feel overwhelming to take the time to prep some veggies and real food to meed the need.

I quickly figured that this was one of the problems for Samantha. That’s when I suggested to her when I suggested she  get that veggie tray fired up and in sight.  And I told her whenever those veggies look good, to eat some.

It’s obviously worked. In today’s coaching session, Samantha said:

One thing you said during our last session really stuck in my head:  ‘If it looks good, eat it!!’  You are absolutely right about having the veggies easily at my fingertips.  This has me eating freely of them and now – they look good to me at times during the day when ‘I’m getting more vegetables in – which is showing in my weight loss.

There are 2 specific things you suggested that have made my weight start moving downward:

1. my fruit consumption is down to 2 a day, where before I had been eating a lot more
2. I’m eating more veggies and greens – largely due to the veggie tray you suggested!

So excited for you, Samantha!