September Eats – Weekly Eats & Groceries

I had originally planned on doing weekly eats when I started the blog. Except I sometimes dig into my meals before I can take pictures or something and the other. No more! Hopefully. I love the fact that it keeps my meals in check, I can share the different foods I eat, and possibly inspire others to eat healthy.

The last weeks of September here are some of my eats:

Pictured above are my “regular” breakfast days for when I’m able to eat breakfast at the intended time of day. Homemade guac with toast and tea, blue oatmeal and blue almond milk smoothie, toast with peanut butter and banana, omelette with roasted veggies on the side, oatmeal with fruit, and strawberry and peach smoothie.

Pictured above are my eats at work, so meals that end up falling between 1 am and 3am. I found eating heavy meals just didn’t work for me at this time, my stomach needed something light and easy. It ends up being a meal similar to breakfast for me, its close enough to regular breakfast time anyway I figure. Oatmeal with baby banana, oatmeal with sliced apple, toast and guac with fruit, mixed salad, bean soup with salad and blueberries, yogurt and cherries, PB&J sandwich with apple, mixed fruits and cucumbers, mixed berries and mixed nuts.

Shopping Hauls:

Small grocery picks up during the week that include stocking up on blueberries and nuts. I also have a small order from iherb.com that included my first museli, I can’t wait to try it!

This is my large grocery haul from just a few days ago. On my day off I ended up making 3 grocery store trips (Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and Food 4 Less). Now I’m done for a good week and a half or so.

Thats all!

Any food picture takers out there want to share their eats?! Tag on instagram at #shotofgreen or post your links and I would love to check them out.

Celebrating Transformations & Getting Back on Track

I’ve been overjoyed because I’ve managed to reach my goal weight by eating healthy over the last two years. Its been a long journey but it doesn’t end here. It’s a lifestyle. I don’t plan to go back to eating fast food or anything  and everything that catches my fancy.

My before picture from 2010 is one of my heaviest weights at 150. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but I barely hit 5’1, and I struggled up one flight of stairs. I was in the worst state of my life physically and mentally. Today I weigh in at 105 lbs but have the same energy I did when I was in middle school. All due to clean eating, a simple gym routine, and a whole lot of motivation.

I might have reached my goal weight but I realized that it’s not about the numbers on the scale. The last few months I’ve been wanting to tone my body. Nothing drastic like being able to bench 100 something pounds. I just want add definition to my body. Heres the thing though, I’ve been pretty bad about hitting the gym recently. By recently I mean I haven’t been to the gym in a month. Insert cringe face. I don’t want to start spewing out excuses BUT I have a mostly legit excuse. I switched to working night shifts at the hospital. I work one full time job, 1 part-time job, and volunteer. Finding the time in my schedule to work-out seems nearly impossible. Its seems impossible but all I really need to do it find a way to schedule it in. So I’m going to start penciling in my fitness days. I’ve started the process of working out at home again I just need to make my way to the gym soon. Baby steps right?

On a brighter note I celebrated my success and partly out of necessity bought quite a few things for my wardrobe. Below is the haul from Express for which I’m finding ways to wear out! I also made good use of Poshmark to build up my wardrobe on a budget. What can I say, I just need a excuse to shop.

Haul of Organic Foods from iHerb & Discount Code

I was recently running a little low on a few pantry items and had my eye on a few new products. I like to use iHerb.com to order a lot of my products because they are always reasonably priced and it gets delivered to my door. I realized quickly that some things were just way to expensive to be buying at my local grocers despite having such a wide variety in Chicago.

iHerb.com offers groceries, supplements, bath and beauty items, kids/babies products, and many other range of items. I recommend getting all your pantry items and supplements here! Scroll down to see the discounts offered and a code I have available.

Here is what I picked up for this order

**Everything Ordered is Organic**

1)Flax Seed Meal

2) Buckwheat Flour

3) Oat Flour

4) Apple Cider Vinegar

5) Extra-Virgin Cold Pressed Coconut Oil

6) Unsweetened Coconut Milk

7) Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

8) Dried Cranberries

9) CocoCardio unsweetened (Cocoa, beet juice, and hibiscus flower powder)

10) Salted Sesame Sticks

11) Coco Butter Chapstick

12) Gummy Multivitamins

13) Toffee Chocolate (not pictured)

— everything for $52.. how great of a deal is that? If you are interested check them out at iHerb.com. They offer shipping worldwide and the code supplied can be used worldwide as well!

Discounts available:

• 1st time users: Use code RIM717 to get $10 off $40 or more of items or $5 off for smaller orders
• Free 3 day shipping for orders of $40 or more (always!)
• Plus they offer discounts (automatically applied) of 5% over any order over $60.
• Free Sample of your choosing from their sample tab

** Disclaimer: I am not paid or compensated for this post. The referral code given is my generated by iherb.com which is given to every customer to use**

Health and Lifestyle — The App Version

Our diet is the driving force of what keeps us healthy; something that should be exceedingly simple and natural to us has become a complicated maze.  It’s no longer a simple struggle on making the right choices between fast food and good food; today we struggle with a complex array of choices in health foods. We have to ask, is it really healthy? How processed is this? Should we eat organic, if so which foods? The list of questions is endless.

The modern way to fix this? Make apps.  When I went shopping for lifestyle and health apps I found a horrifying trend. On 3/27/13 Dominos was the second most downloaded app in the Lifestyle category and Starbucks at number 4. We debate about how to lower obesity and change our lifestyles so we can live healthier lives. Yet here we are.

After being stunned and side tracked in my quest to find healthier apps I was overwhelmed. So many options! So I narrowed it down to a few that seemed download worthy according to user ratings, trends, and app development.

1)Fitness pal- a simple way & free way to keep track of your calories and nutrients for the day and add friends to track progress.

2) Sparkpeople-An app and extensive online community to track your goals (weight loss/gain, support groups,food logs, and many others options). They also have forums according to your goals, health condition and state.

3)Loseit- Same concept of food tracking and goals to help lose weight

3) Noom Weight Loss Coach – Tips, tasks and everything you need from a virtual coach to stay healthy

4) Primal Paleo- How live, eat, and exercise the primal way. What I like is that is a easily navigational app and breakdown of primal foods (by season)

Some other apps /gadgets that I thought would be worth a try for PCOS’ers were:

1) Fitbit – This gadget that has taken over the health community with a storm. Tracks sleep, activity, food and progress through apps, gadgets, and personalized reports to lead a healthy lifestyle. Warning: its pricey!

2) Period Tracker—there are lot of options out there but I prefer and use the free version with the flower symbol because honestly I’m horrible otherwise at knowing how many days are in my cycle or remembering when I had my period and for how long.

 

As of right now I’m registered on Sparkpeople (not as active as I probably should be), Fitnesspal, Period tracker, and recently bought Primal Paleo. Another trend is the simple Instagram by capturing your food choices and following fitness/food bloggers for tips and inspiration.

What do you guys do?

Check-in for first week of April

Check-in

As of 4/1/2013

My height is 5’1 but then again that hasn’t changed since I was in 5th grade.

Weight: 117.5 pounds

Waist Circumference: ? Can’t find the measuring tape but I am down to a size 0 in jeans

Chest: 34

My waist despite wearing a size 0 has little to no tone and has fat padding in the middle. I can wear the size 0 because I have no hips, at all. While this is not my ideal weight or waist circumference I am proud of myself.   Two years ago my body was hidden behind baggy clothes and most days I ate until I was disgusted with myself. As I mention in my about me I had an array of problems and excuses. When I started the process of nursing school and started to learn more about nutrition, health, and the importance of eating right I started the first steps to my change. I was a 5’1 girl that weighed 148 pounds; I don’t know most of my measurements because I would never let that happen. The trouble was that I knew I was overweight I just didn’t realize how
much. Measurement wise I use to wear a 38DD, shirts sized large or extra-large, and I use to squeeze myself into skin tight jeans in a size 6 in which my stomach popped out over the top.

My achievements:

• I’ve been successful in eating healthy this week.
• I’ve made my own Chobani fruit yogurts to cut out the added sugars.
• Experimented with Quinoa recipes such as quinoa burgers
• Added tofu into my foods instead of meat
• Taken lunch to work every day these past two weeks
• Had breakfast everyday these past two weeks

My Goals:

• Eat healthy on my trip to Dallas this week—my family there does not believe in diet and I will be stuck in conference for 8 hours a day there. This will be my biggest challenge
• Work out at least 2-3 times this next week for at least 15 minutes. I’ve cut down on the time just because I will be staying with a family and have a very packed schedule. Maybe I can lift my baby cousin as strength training 😉 … seriously.
• Relax- My week starts with 9-10 hour work days this week and goes into flying to Dallas to live with my somewhat eccentric family and attend 2 days of very long conferences on health.

Here is a picture of my groceries this week, nice and green.

Anyone that would like to check –in?

Getting Healthy Goals

During New Years many  people vowed not for the first time to get healthy, lose weight, and eat right. It can be a overwhelming journey sometimes with so much information on getting healthy.  There are countless apps, diet plans/books, fitness classes, and detox/cleanses to lose weight. So how do you know what is the right plan for you?

I love to make lists, so it was only natural that I started out with making a list of what I wanted to accomplish.

I asked myself: What do I want to accomplish? How will I accomplish this? Do I want to give up anything? Do I want to start incorporating something? Do I have a time frame (is it realistic)?

When I started I knew without a doubt that I wanted to lose weight but I had been saying that since I was in middle school. It never happened, quite the opposite actually. Two years later I have a whole different set of goals for the same challenge –getting healthy.

These are my current goals:

1) No eating out more than once a month

2) Losing 2 inches off my waist by 04/24/13

3) Avoiding bottled juices and soft drinks

4) Exercising at least 3 X a week

5) Clean eating in the forms of fresh vegetables, fruits and nuts

6) No red meat and reduced intake of meat and poultry

7) Juicing once a week (fruits or vegetables)

8) Eating breakfast

9) Drinking green tea 4-7 days a week.

9) Weigh 105 pounds ( I am 5’1)

I’m only human, a food loving chocolate craving human. So I make mistakes and sometimes deviate from the plan and then feel guilty about it until the rest of the day. If I do end up eating some chocolate or some other temptation that I gave into that day, I don’t just stop. I try to make-up for it by adding in a exercise to burn it off and curb my guilt a little.

 

What are your goals? Are you still following your New Years goals? Do you follow a system of rewards and punishments?

 

So I hope that you will join me on this journey in getting healthy, fighting PCOS, and taking a few shots of green.