Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by. I know it's been forever since I posted something worth reading on here. A month is forever in blog land. February was a pretty crap month for me. Two weeks was spent trapped in the house from a blizzard and the university gym being closed due to cold weather, and the other two weeks were spent in a crippling depression spell! Yay! Of course, exercising at home could have helped, but I failed to take action and have gained back four pounds!
566! Let's stay on the positive side. At least it's not 580 pounds.
We finally went shopping for groceries for the month. I figured it would make a good blog post that would lead into meal planning and maybe future recipe posts.
A little about my diet first: The diet plan I'm using to create my meal plan is based off of the
Abs Diet promoted by
Men's Health magazine, with a little bit of planning from
reshapethenation.com thrown in. With the Abs Diet, you focus on getting a lot of good clean foods into three meals and three snacks throughout the day. The advantage to this is that if you focus on getting the core foods they recommend into your diet, the calories and nutrition take care of themselves with very little monitoring. The disadvantage for me is that while I love the whole grain breads, cereals, lean meats and dairy products Abs Diet lets me eat, I don't eat as many vegetables as I should because I still have a love/hate thing with them. This is where Reshape the Nation comes in. They recommend five meals, and have designated hi carb/lo carb days. On low carb days, you eat LOTS of vegetables. The diet uses a carb cycling plan that is meant to keep the metabolism going and you losing weight. They make it super easy by giving you a full meal plan and a grocery list, but to be honest, I think the recipes they recommend suck. I hate cottage cheese and hard boiled eggs. Gross. Mrs. Dash is NOT going to make any of that better. However, I do like planning my meals based on their carb cycling plan. I'll talk about my meal plan in another post.
Let's go shopping!
I took care of veggies and whole grains, mostly, and mom took a cart for lean meats, fish and other things we need for the house. It's almost Lent which means that the family will be eating fish or some vegetarian meal at least once a week. I have to make sure that I eat things like the frozen wild caught salmon, and NOT the pre-fried Gorton's fillets we have lurking in the freezer. But before I got to all that, I had to look for cat litter.
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| After a pointless lap around Walmart Supercenter |
The cat litter was on the opposite side of where I thought it was. I did an entire lap for no reason. More exercise? Sure, but I also learned that I need new shoes, and I should have worn synthetic socks.
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| If only feet could scream... |
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For regular people, shopping probably doesn't cause physical pain. It does for me! I put the cat litter in the cart, and went back for my groceries. Some of these pictures were taken in parts of the store where I didn't get the products. For example, the broccoli in the shoe section.
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| Two pounds of fresh broccoli. I'm going to blanch this! Another blog entry? Sure! | |
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As a young boy, I hated vegetables with an undying passion. In particular, broccoli and spinach. The smell of cooked vegetables used to make me physically ill. Now, I don't hate them so much. But, I still feel like I'm learning how to actually LOVE vegetables the way I like a good pizza or hamburger. It's just not the first thing I think of when I go to get something to eat. This broccoli will make a nice side to whatever I choose to pair it with. Delicious insoluble fiber. Now, I'm not saying broccoli and spinach are boring. I just need more things to do with them. Other than smoothies and the rare salad, I hardly eat spinach and it mostly goes to waste. I guess this is a spinach recipe request.
I took a lot of photos of nutritional info. I'll probably post a great majority, if not all of them on my
Facebook fan page.
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| Organic, nonfat Greek Yogurt |
I'm not sure where I heard, or read it, but somebody I came across was having some confusion about what kind of yogurt to buy. My first recommendation is greek yogurt. It's magic in smoothies, tasty with a bit of sugar free jam, or mixed into your oatmeal with a few blueberries. But, if you think plain nonfat organic greek yogurt (freeplorgrecogurt? Nah, still a mouthful) tastes like a mouthful of cold phlegm, then by all means, buy regular yogurt. To me, the important thing to look for are the magic words: CONTAINS LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES. If it says, "Made with live cultures", then the good bacteria that is beneficial to you has been heat treated until dead. I learned that from Alton Brown of Good Eats on the Food Network.
Back to the shopping adventure: One of the things I found was ground flax seed being sold in the supplements section of the pharmacy for $8.00! Being almost a total noob to flax seed, I almost got it too! But luckily, I found this bag in one of the aisles for around $4.00! They were also selling Coconut oil for $10 and in the cooking oil section I found it for around $5.
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| On the left: $8. On the right, $4 for the same amount! |
Anyway, after about an hour of shopping, I took a picture of what I had. Spinach, broccoli, celery, frozen mixed berries, frozen pineapple, frozen green peas, a BIG box of oatmeal, generic grape-nuts, all natural peanut butter, sugar free blackberry jam, nonfat organic greek yogurt, whole wheat pasta, whole grain sandwich bread, flax seed, coconut oil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup and stuff from cosmetics that mom threw into my cart. Also kitty litter.
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| Commercial sized Oatmeal. If you follow me on twitter, you know how much I love oatmeal. |
This is by no means all of the groceries. But, if I can't make healthy meal choices out of this, I seriously need to reevaluate my commitment to losing weight. Now it's in my hands. If only the bad things could stay out of the cart too.
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| *Sigh* |
I have no intention of throwing my mother under the bus by accusing her of keeping me fat by buying things like these honeybuns and chocolate cupcakes. She may have put these in the cart, but
I choose to eat them. It would however be easier to make better choices if the bad choices were not as existent. Another battle for another time, I guess. Besides, not everything mom got was unhealthy. She did get lean meats and salmon and other things we needed. She told me to get whatever I needed. She found these:
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| LOOK HOW CUTE THE PACKAGING IS! |
These are for kids. Something to throw in their lunchbox as a healthy treat. No added sugar, just squeezable applesauce. I figured this might work as a good pre or post workout snack. Thanks mom!
After several hours of grocery shopping, my everything hurt. Once your feet begin to hurt, everything follows. In my case, it's my knees, sciatic nerve, mid back, arms, etc. Yeah, I got my workout without even trying.
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| AHHH!!!!! |
Even though I was sore from shopping for groceries for a house of six, I was happy that I got to get a few of the things I need to keep me on the right dietary track. I also loved grocery shopping with my mother and spending time with her. I'm going to lose the four pounds I gained back. I'm going to get to my personal weight loss goals. I'll spend time planning and preparing my meals for the week, and hopefully March will be a much better month for me.
