The Daily Dozen Challenge

I am always looking for ways to practice healthy living. This month we are working on the Daily Dozen!

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. 

                                                -Hippocrates

I am teaching my children how to eat based on what their bodies need and not what their heads want. Can we live on sugary cereal, chicken nuggets, and ice cream? Absolutely we can! Because God made our bodies incredible. Is it the best way to live?… mmmm, not so much. So this month I am working on the daily dozen. It's an app that came highly recommended from someone I esteem. So here is the deal- it gives you a checklist for all the variety of foods you should be consuming in a day to gain optimal health. The goal is to offer this variety to my children every single day.

The Daily Dozen Challenge Rules:

  1. This month I will be eating based on the food I already have on hand in my pantry and freezer.

  2. When shopping we will only be buying ingredients off the daily dozen list.

  3. We will cook our meals based on the suggested variety each day.

  4. At dinner, I have to make a new meal that includes whatever servings are left unchecked on the list. I can add to the ingredients, but I can't take away.

This method may seem extreme, but hear me out. The hope is to get my kids accustomed to a variety of foods. This way, when they are eating intuitively, listening to their bodies and cravings, they can articulate what to ask for. I'll check back in with the outcome and permanent lifestyle changes, if any, on the first of October!

The Daily Dozen Shake Down

September Week 1

This week was a challenge. I jumped in full steam and quickly realized that the daily dozen is an entire day worth of nutrition for a full-grown man. I simply don't need that many servings in a day for my body to run efficiently, which means I could NOT eat anything that was NOT on the list, not if I wanted a shot at meeting the daily guidelines. We also had to eat some weird meals on days when I did not curate these servings into recipes carefully. Who has the time to think about food this much? This approach does not offer realistic beneficial lifestyle changes for me.

September Week 2

This week I had to reassess and try a different strategy. The goal is not to eat every single serving every day. Some days we need more or less food than others. For example, some days we do karate or go for a run. Some days we have a family movie night and spend more time on schoolwork. These days do not expend the same amount of energy and do not need the same amount of calories. The goal is to offer my family this variety daily so they can choose what their bodies need. If I could not serve the array of foods in 24 hours, then I stretched it over 48 hours.

Helpful Methods:

  • My kids like oatmeal, so I prepped oatmeal for the week on Sunday and packed as many ingredients into it as possible. This process saved me time throughout the week, saved money on my grocery bill, and allowed me to check some of those boxes consistently without anyone suffering or eating weird food.

  • Prepping the variety, I batch cooked a meal base that I can freeze and pull out for a quick dinner. Rice, Mushrooms, Onions, Carrots, spinach. This base offers a grain, green, and multiple servings of vegetables. I can use this to whip up various casseroles and soups or as a stand-alone power-packed side.

Systems like this can consistently benefit us because it serves a purpose in many categories: budgeting, planning, time management, quick-fix solutions, and offering dietary variety. Boom! Realistic. Lifestyle. Change.

September Week 3

This week was a little harder to track our servings because it was a big week. We had a family wedding which, as you may well know, can present all sorts of unexpected chaos. There was a lot of eating out, eating in other people's homes, eating catered food, and eating on the go. The outcome was actually... pretty great. It reminded me of that saying, " You don't rise to the occasion, you fall back on your training." Since I had prepared and "trained" if you will, the last two weeks, I was able to make good choices for my children and me every day even though the circumstances weren't ideal. Isn't that pretty much the ultimate test? If you can do it in auxiliary mode? I mean, if you can do it without pouring unreasonable amounts of energy and focus- then why wouldn't you?

The Daily Dozen Wrap Up

I'm going to go ahead and wrap this challenge up right here. Eating this way is reasonable, and I'm going to keep doing it. I challenge you to check it out. Click here for more information on how you can start living better today!

Jennifer Myers