Making Healthy Choices

If you aren’t sure where to start when you want to begin eating a healthier diet. USDA’s ChooseMyPlate is a reliable resource to get you started. It shares a variety of nutrition, health and wellness information including:

• Eating Healthy – tips, and detailed information on each of the food groups
• MyPlate MyState – find out what’s grown in your home state
• MyPlate Kitchen – recipe bank and videos
• MyPlate Plan – create an eating plan that works for you
• Variety of Resources – seasonal foods, food safety tips, printable pages, fact sheets for everyone, and videos

Start Simple with MyPlate App and Motivation

Everyone loves a good challenge! Sometimes a challenge or a simple reminder is the push we need to keep moving forward in our healthy living journey. ChooseMyPlate recently announced seasonal healthy habit challenges using the Start Simple with MyPlate app. Spring 2020’s challenge will begin Monday, March 16, 2020 and you can expect additional challenges in summer, fall and winter. The seasonal challenges will have special badges you can earn if you meet at least 5 of your goals within the allotted time period for that specific challenge.

Using the App

Once you’ve downloaded the app, it will guide you through the very easy-to-use setup. In the app, you will set your own personal healthy habit goals, choosing 1 – 3 goals per food group (fruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, dairy). You aren’t required to set a goal for every food group; however, the option is available. Each day, you will check off your daily goals and earn a healthy habit badge when you meet those goals. And if that wasn’t enough – you can also earn a 2 and 5 day streak badge for meeting your daily goals 2 and 5 days in a row. While I haven’t earned all of my badges yet, you can see in the app under the badges tab there are several badges you can earn – one for each of the food groups.

The app settings allows you to choose if you want daily and challenge reminders (which I would recommend). Those gentle nudges are there to provide you with a little extra motivation to reach your daily goals.

Healthy Eating Tips

The app offers “simple tips” to help you meet your goals along the way. One of my first tips that supported my personal goal to snack on fruit was to “bring a bag of clementines to work for the week – for you and to share.” Whatever you choose for your goal, the “simple tip” will align with what you are trying to achieve. Just look for the light bulb icon within the app, tap or click it, and the “simple tip” will pop up.

If you’d like to see more before downloading the Start Simple with MyPlate app, check out the short video for more details.

I hope you will join me in the seasonal challenges using the Start Simple with MyPlate app. I’m looking forward to a little healthy competition, earning a few badges and improving what’s on MyPlate.

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