Your Commissary Challenges You to Supercharge Your Nutrition in March!

Maybe you made a New Year’s resolution to eat better, and maybe you got off track with it. You might have snacked while watching the Big Game or eaten a little too much chocolate or candy for Valentine’s Day. Before you knew it, your resolve to make healthier choices began to fade. But every day is a new opportunity to build healthier habits, and Your Commissary is here to help!

March is when Spring begins, a time of new beginnings. It’s also National Nutrition Month, which makes it a great time to have a fresh start and familiarize yourself with the Healthy Living resources we offer, if you haven’t already. We’re giving you advance notice so you can prepare for our 30-Day Challenge, if you choose to accept it: use these resources to help you build healthy habits for 30 days to see how simple and effective these changes can be!

DeCA’s Dietitian and Health & Wellness Program Manager, Deborah Harris (MPH, RDN, CDCES) has designed these resources as a toolkit that you can use, both in this challenge and daily life, to build healthy habits as simply as possible.

These resources are adaptable, because you can use any or all of them in whatever combination works best for your life, while saving money on the meals themselves by shopping at Your Commissary. They’re effective, because they’re dietitian-approved, based on scientifically-credible principles of nutrition and expert guidance from official government sources, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). And they’re easy to use, because even simple changes, like cooking more meals at home or swapping out some recipe ingredients, can make a big impact.

“Nutrition doesn’t have to be scary and it doesn’t have to be ‘perfect’,” Harris said. “Any efforts you make to improve the nutritional quality of your diet are steps in the right direction, and  this  challenge is designed to encourage and support you in taking those steps in ways that work for you. Our resources are designed to be flexible, easy and economical.”

Try Thinking Outside the Box with meal solutions that pair quick, healthy, budget-friendly recipes with scientifically-credible, dietitian-approved guidance on how these meals can improve the nutritional quality of your diet. The meal solutions make it convenient for you to implement this, while also arming you with the knowledge you need in order to put this into practice by making simple changes to other recipes.

Our Dietitian-Approved Dinner Meal Plan makes it easy to plan your meals for the month – and it’s printable! It includes a calendar of dietitian-approved recipes you can use for dinner throughout the month, as well as weekly shopping lists with space to fill in the rest of the meals you’re planning each day, so you’ll know exactly what you’ll need from the store each week.

Use Commissary CLICK2GO, our online ordering service, to instantly add the ingredients of your favorite dietitian-approved recipe to your virtual grocery cart! When you’re ready to place your order, sign in to Commissary CLICK2GO, click on the recipe banner and select the recipe you would like to add to your meal plan for the week. You can click the “Add to Cart” button beside each of the ingredients to select the specific products you need to purchase to prepare the meal.

You can also click the printer icon in the upper right-hand corner of the recipe to get a printable version of it for easy reference while cooking. Preparing nutritious food at home has never been easier!

We did the work for you! The Dietitian Approved Thumb (DAT) makes it easy to build your basket with us by identifying healthy foods that are dense in nutrition from attributes such as lean proteins, healthy fats and whole grains. The DAT is a resource that was built exclusively for commissary customers to help them improve their overall health by putting “Thumbs Up” tags on food items that are dietitian-approved. This makes it easier for you to identify products that can supplement your wellness needs while you’re shopping.

Visit our “grab & go” Dietitian Approved Fueling Stations near the registers at participating locations to find a variety of nutritious and high-performance foods! Visiting one of these fueling stations is a great way to stock up on quick snacks and meals you can enjoy while you’re on the go, which makes it an excellent alternative to fast food drive-thrus. You can find a list of participating locations on our website.  We also encourage you to visit our Deli Fueling Stations page to find a list of dietitian-approved salads, sandwiches and wraps that may be available in Your Commissary’s Deli Department.

The great news is that you don’t have to go through the 30-Day Challenge alone! To help you along the way, Harris will provide tips and engage with our customers who comment on our weekly Facebook posts to share their progress.

We’ll be making these posts each Tuesday night all month long, in preparation for #WellnessWednesday. Harris will also host a special Facebook Live on our page to interact with customers participating in 30-Day Challenge on March 8 at 2:00 PM Eastern.

If you decide to share updates on your own feed, as well, whether on Facebook or another social channel, then we invite you to use #DeCA30DayChallenge and #NationalNutritionMonth as hashtags on your posts, so we can all stay connected!

When the 30-Day Challenge is over, take March 31 to reflect on your progress. Was it easier or harder than you expected? What could you do better? And, most importantly, now that you’ve built these habits, can you keep the gains you’ve made and keep going? If so, you’re not alone! We encourage you to visit our Healthy Living page regularly to stay up-to-date on the latest information! Remember, all of the resources we listed will still be available to you. Plus, you can use our Weekly Meal Plan Worksheet to continue planning your meals and preparing your shopping lists.