 I wanna talk to you guys about vegetables really quick because I don't know about you but me personally I get asked all the time from people who don't really know me very well whether I eat a lot of vegetables and a lot of times they just assume like hey you're a fitness coach you must eat lots of vegetables and fruits and you must be super conscious of that and you must never eat burgers or pizza or ice cream or anything and I'm like I eat a lot of vegetables but that's not the reason why I'm able to stay lean and so that's exactly what this video is about today a lot of people think if I eat more healthy foods or eat more vegetables or fruits I will be leaner I will lose more weight and that is not the case it is not it if I do this then that happens but I will explain to you today exactly how you do lose weight and what role vegetables should play in your nutrition regimen first off let's set the record straight you don't lose weight by eating more healthy foods you lose weight by eating the right amount of food for your body so we're talking calories and macronutrients so vegetables for example for the most part vegetables they do have a little bit of protein a little bit of fats but for the most part they're a carbohydrate and in general vegetables don't have a lot of calories so when you think about incorporating them into your diet you can eat a lot of vegetables and still not consume many calories which is great because they're very high in micronutrients which are vitamins and minerals and low in macronutrients such as carbohydrates and especially fats and proteins so when you're eating vegetables you're just factoring them into your total daily intake but that doesn't mean you can't eat other foods or you have to eat vegetables every day but there is a very specific purpose for consuming vegetable veggies vegetables the reason why you want to eat vegetables and fruits and other high quality whole foods is because they're high in micronutrients and so what a micronutrient is is either a vitamin or a mineral for example let's look at broccoli everybody loves broccoli right if you put enough sauce on it everybody loves broccoli broccoli is high in a lot of different micronutrients specifically though it's very high in vitamin k and vitamin k is known to help us with bone density bone strength and overall heart health also is high in vitamin c and we know that vitamin c is very good for immune function so we can look at all different types of vegetables and break them down one by one and realize that each one serves a different purpose it helps with your normal body function in a different way does that mean you have to eat all the vegetables in every day no but that's why it's important to consume 70% whole foods so in the span of a week or so you are eating a good amount of vegetables in your diet and you don't really have to worry about eating pizza and ice cream the other things that you do like because you know you're balancing it out with the veggies that you're consuming otherwise in the 70% of the food you're consuming on a daily basis so here's the deal what you need to do with vegetables your responsibility on a daily basis should be to eat around five portions so that doesn't mean you have to go eat a bunch of different vegetables on one day you could just eat a lot of broccoli or a lot of salad but in general to maintain healthy normal function of the body we recommend trying to consume around five servings of vegetables a day and let's say you don't get it one day don't worry about it you can spread this out over course of a week and let's say you're traveling you're not able to get your normal vegetable intake what you can do is consume something like athletic greens it's something we've talked about a lot in this channel because it helps us personally it's not a vegetable replacement but think about it this way each serving of athletic greens is equivalent to 12 servings of vegetables so if you for some reason are traveling you can't get nutritious whole food vegetables in your diet you can replace it for that one day with a scoop of athletic greens or maybe one day you're able to get a salad and you know earlier in the day but you're not able to consume any other vegetables after that you know consume another scoop of athletic greens in addition to that to help you get your micronutrient numbers where you want them to be another reason you might want to use athletic greens on a daily basis even if you do get your other vegetables in is because athletic greens is highly dense in micronutrients and many other nutrients that your body needs to function normally in general so if you consume a scoop of that on a daily basis you know you have your bases covered but it's not a substitute period we want you eating whole foods on a daily basis this is just icing on the cake or if you don't for whatever reason have access to vegetables one day you can use it as a replacement so that's basically what I wanted to share with you guys for vegetables I know so many people think that if they eat certain foods they're going to lose weight or gain muscle or etc etc it doesn't work that way you guys it's all about your total calorie and macronutrient intake which is calories the energy that your body takes to use for energy and normal daily function and macronutrients the distribution of what those calories are made of so carbohydrates fats and proteins if you have any questions about anything I mentioned in this video drop them in the comments below happy to answer them for you we also answer a lot of questions like this in our free four week challenge so I'll link that in the first line description I'll see athletic rings we've talked about throughout this video we'll link that in the description as well and finally if you enjoyed this video please subscribe to the youtube channel and we will continue to make content like this that you asked for you are the fuel of the zendu fitness engine so please give us your feedback and we'll continue to make videos that help you get lean and live in awesome life