June Challenge: Eat Healthy Meals

By Leo Babauta

I’m excited to challenge you to healthy eating in June … I’m going to be super focused on this myself, and want you all to join me!

As we wrap up the May Do-What-You-Love-Daily Challenge, I’d like you to consider this June challenge. It’s not just for those who want to lose weight (though it’s well suited for that goal), but also for anybody who wants to get leaner, gain muscle, or just have radiant health.

It’s my belief that radiant health comes from:

• A healthy diet full of vegetables and other fibrous, nutritious foods
• Good sleep
• Regular exercise (strength, yoga, and some kind of walk/run/bike/sports activity are my favorites)
• Not smoking
• Relationships/community
• Some kind of purpose in life
• Mindfulness & stress coping mechanisms

Not in that order, as they’re all pretty important. But if you could develop these, you’d be living a radiantly healthy life.

Of these, probably the areas that would have the biggest impact for most people would be sleep, diet and quitting smoking (if applicable). I’d like you to pick diet for June, unless you strongly need to focus on your sleep right now.

So I’m issuing the Eat Healthy Meals Challenge!

Here’s the challenge:

1. First week: Focus on eating a hearty salad for lunch every day (or some other veggie-filled simple meal)
2. Second week: Focus on eating a healthy, fiber-filled breakfast (while keeping the salad for lunch)
3. Third week: Focus on eating a healthy dinner (I have some suggestions), keeping the other meals going
4. Fourth week: Strengthen areas that need to be strengthened — changing your accountability or environment (if needed) to be more consistent, getting rid of unhealthy drinks or snacks, etc.

I’ll be providing some vegan recipes for the hearty salad, my favorite breakfast at the moment, and my favorite dinner … but you are free to choose something different, as long as you are getting lots of vegetables and fiber and other nutrition.

I’ll have articles talking about nutrition and changing your eating habits as well.

And of course, we’ll have a weekly check-in.

Join me by signing up here!

Then go to the Week 1 article on hearty salads.

Here’s Week 2’s Healthy Breakfast article.

Here’s Week 3’s Healthy Dinner article.

And finally, Adjusting & Fine Tuning in Week 4.

Questions & Answers

A couple answers to questions you might have:

• Q: Do I need to eat vegan for this challenge? A: Not at all. The meals I’ll share will be vegan, but you can either alter them to suit you (add fish or chicken, for example) or choose your own healthy meals to stick to.
• Q: What if I don’t want to eat a salad for lunch? A: You can make the challenge whatever you want. I highly recommend a hearty salad because you’re getting a ton of nutrition in one meal (I’ll go more into that soon), but I’m not going to force anyone to do anything.