Fruits and Veggies – Daily recommendations

I’m not a big veggie eater, but I do love all types of fruit. Sometimes it’s hard to get in my recommended five fruits and veggies a day (by WW standards), but I try.

My old standby veggies are lettuce and broccoli. Seriously, all I really eat regularly is salad and steamed broccoli, but that’s only a few times a week.

I’m trying to be more adventurous and also enjoy tomatoes, carrots and most recently cucumbers and yellow squash. I love zucchini, but in sweet and sugary zucchini bread. Eggplant parmesan is ok, but sometimes the texture bothers me. I enjoy spinach in my salads (in small amounts) and Costco has some good low fat frozen spinach ravioli (only 2-3 points per 6 pieces) to which I usually top with tomato sauce. Did I mention that Italian is my favorite cuisine?

I think the USDA also recently raised their recommended intake of fruits and vegetables from “5 A Day for Better Health” to something like 8! Not sure how I’ll do that. I just looked up my recommended intake and it measured that I need 1.5 cups of fruits and 2.5 cups of vegetables a day. Look up your requirements here.

Summer is here though, so I’ll enjoy some sweet summer corn and Southern Maryland  has some of the best small farm grown sweet white corn.

Create your own Exercise Log Book

I get bored easily with exercise and find it hard to stick too. I’m a very goal oriented person though. One thing that has worked for me is creating an exercise log book. I started it when I bought my treadmill in 2004.

It’s great looking back and seeing all the miles I’ve walked and the workouts I’ve logged. It also makes me realize that when I put in the time to exercise, I was rewarded with weight loss!

Here is my sample log book and I recommend you create one. Any old notebook will do, and mine is a simple college ruled single subject notebook. I originally started with the headings Date, Time, Minutes and Miles when I was just walking, but it has since changed to Date, Activity, Minutes and Miles.

It’s that simple. For activity I write down the type, weather it was a workout video, treadmill walk, outdoor walk or Curves. I keep running track of total miles logged (plus Curves workouts) and here are my grand totals as of today.

Although it may not impress you, it does impress me! Since 2004 I’ve logged 306.25 miles and 95 Curves workouts.  My best year by far was 2005 which I like to look back at, and see that I exercised at least a few times a week or at least 30 minutes (sometimes up to an hour). The year I started grad school, 2006, is by far my worst, but I won’t look back, I’ll only try to do better these days.

Weight Watchers vs. Curves Magazine (diane)

I’ve been on Weight Watchers for awhile now and have been fairly successful. I’m not at goal and am not sure when I’ll finally (or if I) make it.

I also worked at Curves briefly after my daughter turned 1 (so I could get out of the house, work out and loose more weight). Curves is an excellent program although I am younger than their target demographic which is 40+ women.

Comparing their magazines though, WW is a paid subscription delivered six times per year and Diane, the Curves magazine, is free for their customers and is issued quarterly. The thing I like best about Curves magazine is that they feature women who are working the program and have lost weight, even though they may not be at their goal weight or even their “ideal” weight. Their stories are inspiring and inspirational for those of us working on our weight problems and issues. Now WW on the other hand only features people who have reached their goal weight. While I also admire them, it makes me feel like a loser or a failure that I haven’t reached my goal yet and I’ve been doing the program since 2003 (even though I was delayed by a pregnancy and birth).

If WW magazine and indeed all women’s magazines feature women of real sizes and all body shapes and types, I believe a lot more of us would stop (or reduce) the self loathing of our bodies. Perhaps if we changed our media to show real women, then advertisers and marketing would sell less of their diet and weight loss products. Feature more women, who are real, although less than “ideal.” We come in all shapes and sizes, yet all we see is one size fits all. Unfortunately for the majority of women’s magazines, that is not the case.

My Saturday Smoothie

This is my version of Robek’s Big Wednesday Smoothie, but without the sherbet. It makes two servings and they are 5.5 points each. I buy several different bags of frozen fruits and keep them in my freezer for smoothies. This one is delicious!

I usually make these on the weekend after my workout as a snack before lunch time. I add the GoLean shake mix for protein, and a scoop of fiber, but if you don’t have those available you can leave them out. Today I ran out of frozen peaches, so I used frozen mangos. Trader Joe’s has great bags of frozen pineapples and other fruit. I break it up into 2 large glasses and make a small glass for my daughter. Enjoy!

Measurement	Ingredient	Points Value
1 cup	Ice	0
1 cup	Unsweetened frozen strawberries	1
1 cup	Frozen pineapple	2
1 cup	Frozen peaches (or frozen mangos)	1
1	Banana sliced in chunks (fresh not frozen)	2
1 scoop	Kashi GoLean Vanilla Energy Shake	2
1 tsp	Daily Fiber Formula (powder Yerba Prima)	0
1 cup	Trader Joe’s Tropical Papaya Nectar	3
1 cup	Water	0

Add the ice first and use the ice crush feature on your blender. Then add the shake mix and fiber. Add the fresh banana plus remaining frozen fruits and pour the juice and water on top. Select the liquefy setting on your blender and blend until smooth. You may have to add additional water if it does not blend completely.

Can We Do It? Lose weight that is

I’m not fat, I’m just big boned. I’ve heard this expression my whole life. As a young school girl, I was always the tallest in my class. The girl in the back row center of all the school pictures? That was me. Although I was not necessarily overweight as a child, I did put on the pounds in high school and then some more during college.

I love food and I hate to exercise. Weight loss is hard. I know. I’ve been trying to loose weight for as long as I remember.

I did Fen-Phin one summer and lost 30 pounds, another summer I read the Oprah and Bob book and lost a few pounds, but I was somewhat of a yo-yo and only dieted when my time allowed. I have never tried Jenny Craig, L.A. Weight Loss, South Beach or the Atkins diet.

I was quite successful back in 2003 with Weight Watchers and lost 56 pounds before becoming pregnant. I continued to loose weight after having my daughter with a grand total of over 90 pounds lost on WW.

I was doing pretty well with watching my weight and working out all before grad school came along. Now I’ve put on about 20 pounds. Can I lose it before the end of the year? Who knows, but I’ll try.