How to eat spinach leaves like potato chips

My daily pound of green goodness.

I have a new habit. A good habit for a change. This single new habit has transformed my eating, turning me into the kind of person who eats spinach leaves like they're potato chips. Am I weird? Am I making this up like so much reality tv romance? No, I swear, it's totally true.

Inspired by Joel Fuhrman's recommendation in his book "Eat to Live" that a good nutrition goal is to try and eat one lb of raw vegetables a day, I decided to measure that out one day and see just how much 1 pound is. I mean, is that even realistic? I had filled a container with about 1/2 a head of romaine lettuce, a couple handfuls of spinach, a handful of shredded cabbage, 1/4 green bell pepper, five carrtos, and five grape tomatoes when the scale hit one pound. It looked about the size of a salad for a family of four. Big, but really not impossible.

I put the lid on the container, grabbing a leaf of romaine that was preventing the lid from closing and eating it right there, without dressing or anything, as if it were actually something delicious. A few hours later, I got the 1/4 bell pepper, a couple of carrots and tomatoes and some hummus for a snack. When lunch came, it was so easy to make a little salad to go along with my leftover veggie enchiladas. The big payoff came at dinner, though, when I realized that if I made a big salad, I would have eaten all the veggies in the container and met the heroic one pound goal.

You'll have to try it for yourself to feel how great eating an entire pound of raw veg is. It's strangely liberating. You know that no person can remain unhealthy eating like that. You know that this time, you're going to be successful. I measure out my one pound almost every day now. Sometimes, when I'm munchy, I'll just stand in the kitchen mindlessly eating spinach leaves while I try to figure out what's for dinner. Can you imagine that?

I think the reason this has turned me into a plant-munching machine is the same principal that measuring out 8 cups of water for the day turns people into water-guzzling machines. It's just there. So, get out your biggest food storage container and that old food scale and try it. You'll need some healthy dressings for your salads, too. If you need ideas, there's an awesome list of no-oil salad dressings over at Healthy Girl's Kitchen.

Yours in good health,
Summer