A Few Words From The Wife

When Frank suggested starting this blog I have to say that I wasn't 100% on board.  I have tried blogging about my diets before in the hopes of providing myself with some kind of accountability and after a while they have all petered out.  I have tried Weight Watchers (at least 20 times), counting calories, the Atkins plan, reducing carbs, reducing fat and Intuitive Eating as well as many other plans.  I have become an expert label reader and can tell you the Weight Watchers points in just about anything you choose to put in your mouth.  Frank and I have tried doing Weight Watchers together a couple of times and eventually the initial  interest and enthusiasm would wear off and we would lose our initiative.  What would be different this time?

Well, after embarking on this plan together I am gaining confidence daily that this eating style is one that we can live with for the rest of our lives.  We are concentrating on improving our nutrition together and that has made a big difference.  In the past one or the other of us would get unhappy about the way we looked and make a grand plan to improve while the other halfheartedly agreed to try it out.  The problem with that was a matter of real support.  After a few days one of us would start craving chocolate or ice cream or chips and mention it to the other person.  The less enthusiastic person would cave almost immediately and the plan would be over until the next time.  Now there are no good foods or bad foods.  The only thing we agreed to do was give our taste buds a decent amount of time to adjust to eating real food before we gave ourselves a "treat".  We have been concentrating on trying to cut the excess fat and processed ingredients from our food without sacrificing flavor.  Shopping at our local Farmers Market and taking advantage of having access to the the freshest ingredients possible has really helped us to appreciate what we have been missing all along.  Real food and real flavors.  Since no food is particularly off limits, just yesterday I decided to doctor my water with a sugar free flavoring.  Although it was sugar free, it was still so sweet that it was actually bitter and the fake flavoring left a nasty aftertaste.  This is a product that I have really enjoyed using in the past and thought was really tasty, a great improvement on plain 'ol water!  After thinking about it, I realized that what I was accustomed to using in my water was loaded with chemicals and was actually pretty disgusting.  Lets have a eulogy for Mio sugar free water flavoring, it was nice to know ya Mio.  Next I predict a death knell for my oldest and most beloved nemesis - Diet Coke!

It's been about 9 days since Frank and I embarked on our new lifestyle and so far things have been going great!  Tonight while we were eating dinner Frank remarked that we had gone 4 days now without eating meat - victory! Frank said that it was the longest he had ever gone without eating meat since he was in his twenties and he was feeling really righteous, I'm so proud of him!

So far we are really keeping good on our promise to change our eating habits.  Tonight Frank prepared an Indian meal that was delicious.  After perusing our new favorite websites (Budget Bytes and Whole Living) he decided on Coconut Lentils and Spiced Tofu with Wilted Spinach.  Now, I have to be honest here, I wasn't too enthusiastic about the spinach.  I love Indian food but I have never been tempted to try the creamed spinach and cheese dish called Palak Paneer.  Palak Paneer looks like baby-food and I have never been a fan of creamed spinach in the first place.  It's a texture thing.  Also, let's have a little chat about tofu.  I don't mind it too much and will eat it when it's prepared with a lot of spices OR deep-fried to minimize the tofuness.  When something has been fried to golden brown crispy deliciousness what's not to like? I could eat a deep-fried shoe and be happy, but otherwise ... no tofu.  When Frank described the recipe to me he was really excited about it and wanted to try it out.  I figured that I would choke down a small  amount of the baby-food spinach to be nice and double up on the lentils.  I slopped some on my plate and berated myself for giving myself a large serving on accident.  Boo!  Well, when I sat down at the table and took a miserly little bite ... holy crud and slap me sideways, it was delicious!  The spinach wasn't overcooked and still had a little crunch, the yogurt gave it a nice tanginess and the onions, spices and garlic really made that dish sing.  The tofu just hung out in the background and added a nice chewy texture.  Call me a creamed spinach convert, as long as Frank prepares it it's not half bad!  As for the lentils, they added a nice salty balance to the meal when eaten with the tangy spinach.  The flavor from the coconut milk was very subtle and was just right.  Frank served the lentils over a hard-boiled egg like his Mama used to do back in the day and it added a nice extra bit of flavor.  All in all, it was a great meal and after several days of sticking to our goals I am confident that our new lifestyle will soon become old hat!


     

Week One.

We're now 10 days into our new low budget better health program and for the most part it has been a very positive experience.

We have been able to significantly cut our grocery costs. We've been going to the local Farmer's' Market and buying some wonderful, fresh and flavorful produce, including various types of tomatoes, zucchini, basil, apples etc. We had been spending over $150 a week and the last few weeks we have spent about $80 on Saturday and less than $20 during the week for sundries. We've been planning meals so we are able to shop for specific products instead of buying a whole bunch of stuff and building meals around those products. That has cut down on our waste.

We've been able to cut way down on our meat consumption and have only had 2 real meat meals n the last 10 days. We've also almost completely cut out highly processed foods from our diets. The first couple of days were a little tough, but for the most part we don't really miss them and as our taste buds adjust we're finding that we don't need as much sweeteners. We do use relatively small amounts amounts of cheese, eggs and dairy products, but not nearly as much as before.

We've been trying out various healthy meals and some of them are keepers, some aren't. So far we love the Eggplant Parmesan we made, although it is pretty heavy on cheese and olive oil so that will be put into a light rotation on  our meal plans and next time we will cut back on the cheese. Janet also found a Chile Relleno Casserole that we made with chiles that we roasted ourselves and was delicious. That was also a little heavy on the dairy products, so light rotation for that as well. I also made a nice Pasta w/ Pesto Cream Sauce and Tomatoes that was delicious but a little heavy on the cream, so we'll either try to cut back on the cream next time or find another recipe.

As we proceed we're confident that we will find more delicious recipes that are healthy and low on calories and fat. Janet made a Baked Banana Bread Oatmeal. It is made from bananas, oatmeal, milk, cinnamon, walnuts and a little bit of sugar. It made enough for 4 or 5 breakfasts for 2 people and is delicious.

Tonight we made Baked Egg Rolls, which were very flavorful and very low on calories and fat. The recipe made 14 egg rolls and had only 2 1/2 Tablespoons of olive and sesame oil, egg roll wrappers, soy sauce and vegetables, cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, scallions, garlic and ginger. Baking them, instead of deep frying, of course helped to cut the fat and calories. We each had a filling dinner and we have 6 left over for each of us to have lunch tomorrow.This recipe is going into heavy rotation.

Janet found a couple of great sites that specialize in low budget and healthy foods. They are Whole Living and Budget Bytes. We got the Egg Roll Recipe and the Baked Banana Bread Oatmeal from the Budget Bytes Blog.

My tomato plants are coming along very nicely. It's been 3 weeks since I planted them and they are already 3 1/2 inches tall and 5 of the 6 are doing real well. They have another 3 weeks or so in the vegetative stage before I change the light period to 12 hours a day and they begin the flowering and fruiting stage.

All in all we are feeling really good about these changes we have made and find that we are not really missing all the foods we used to ea, although we saw a pizza commercial and had some brief cravings, but they passed, and it's not like we'll never eat food like that, it will just be as occasional treats instead of our regular fare.

Oh.. and I stepped on the scale for the first time yesterday and had lost 2 pounds in the first week, so positive development on that front as well.

Our First Steps On A Journey To A Healthier Life:

 

 

Our First Steps On A Journey To A Healthier Life:

So my wife and I have decided to embark on a journey to better health on a paycheck to paycheck budget..

I'm turning 52 next month (Janet is considerably younger), and while it's never too late to get healthier, I'm at the point of diminishing returns. If I don't do something now, it is only going to get harder and harder to make a meaningful difference in the quality of my life.

We've both been struggling with weight issues for many years now and have tried different diets and systems to address this with little success. We have found, as have so many others, that under these methods progress is, for the most part, temporary and that ultimately these methods serve to discourage us more than anything else.

Up until now we have not been very active and our eating habits have not been great. We do not frequent fast food establishments and we have, for the most part, avoided heavily processed foods. However, our diet has been heavy on meat, fat and sugar and we simply eat too much.

We are living on a severely limited budget. Conventional wisdom says that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to have a truly healthy diet on such a budget. We aim to prove to ourselves that living a healthy lifestyle and living on a very limited budget are not mutually exclusive. We also want to prove that we can live said healthy lifestyle without the mindset of sacrifice and without depriving ourselves of flavorful foods and fulfilling meals.

We are starting this blog on the theory that you are more likely to achieve your goals and hold yourself accountable when you make them public and document them. Both Janet and I will be posting updates on our progress. We are newbies at this and expect this to be an exciting journey filled with successes and pride as well as setbacks and frustration. We certainly would appreciate any feedback, advice, ideas and support that we can get.

These are certainly not original nor revolutionary ideas, and in fact are mostly just common sense.

Here's our plan of action:

1) Don't focus so much on the weight issue: This is about overall health and a better life. As we eat healthier and become more active our weight will take care of itself. Standing on the scale every day, with the natural fluctuations of our bodies and metabolism can only serve to frustrate and discourage us.

2) Become more active: This is obviously the least expensive and is potentially one of the most productive things we can do for our health. Simply taking walks or doing simple cardio-vascular exercises are invaluable towards reaching our goals.

3) Significantly cutback on our meat consumption and eat more vegetables: Up until now, almost every meal has been built around a main course that consists of meat and perhaps some sort of buttery or fatty sauce served with a starch like rice, pasta or potatoes with vegetables as an afterthought. Our goal is to eat meat centered meals no more than a couple of times a week and dramatically increase our consumption of vegetables.

4) Purchase locally grown and seasonal produce whenever possible: Self-explanatory, but the produce available in most local grocery stores comes from all over the country and even the world. Most of the produce you buy at grocery stores is simply not at its nutritional peak. In order to get it to you before it spoils it has been picked before it is truly ripe and treated to help preserve it and make it look nutritious and appetizing. It has also probably been treated with large amounts of chemical pesticides and with chemical fertilizers, not to ensure optimum nutritional value, but to ensure optimal yields. An added bonus is that when we buy local, our money stays in our area and helps our local economy and local farmers.

5) Learn how to grow our own healthy, organic produce and thus cut back on our food expenses: This is not as hard as it sounds. We have already started a small hydroponic tomato setup.

This is a brand new initiative for us. Here's what we have done so far:

This weekend, we went to our local Farmers' Market and spent about $20 dollars on locally grown produce. It was great experience and we loved all the variety and enjoyed talking with local farmers and small business people. The produce looked so vibrant and colorful and enticing. Plus we spent about an hour outdoors walking around, which is significantly more activity than we typically engage in on a Saturday morning.

After that we made a list of 10 meals to make using that local produce and made a shopping list of products that we needed that were not available at the Farmers' Market. We then went to 2 different local grocery stores to purchase the needed items at the best prices we could find. We have found that the El Rancho Market chain that caters to the Latino market has cheaper and more vibrant looking produce than our chain stores. For instance, we bought Roma Tomatoes (which we forgot to get at the Farmers' Market) for 33 cents a pound as opposed to a dollar or more at the local Smith's. We also went to Winco, a bargain grocery chain, to buy our bulk foods like rice, pasta, beans etc, and items like dairy products. We bought various staples and a few extras like fruit juice and a limited amount of treats. All in all, we spent about $70 which will provide us with 10 dinners for 2 people (and there are bound to be leftovers) as well as lunch food and beverages, which we don't think is very expensive at all.

On Saturday evening I cooked Eggplant Parmisan and a Pasta with fresh tomatoes and a homemade pesto. Both these dishes were absolutely delicious. I wish I had a picture to show. Admittedly, they were not very low on fat. There was more butter, cheese and olive oil than I would have liked to have used for health reasons, but we do not have a large repertoire of vegetable meals to cook yet and obviously we will be searching for a wider variety of flavorful recipes that do not rely as much on those kinds of ingredients. Last night we ate corn on the cob and Janet made a very nice tomato salad that was visually vibrant and colorful, was bursting with flavor and contained a couple of varieties of locally grown tomatoes (neither of which I had ever seen before), fresh basil and some mozzarella cheese with a vinaigrette dressing. While we are not completely eliminating meat from our diet, this was the first time I can remember that we have gone 48 hours without eating some kind of meat, so I did feel kind of righteous.

We have also set up a small indoor hydroponic system to learn the art of growing our own healthy organic produce. I have a "bubbleponics" system which is a combination of Deep Water Culture and Top Feed Hydroponics. It's supposed to cut growing time by up to 50% and produce a larger yield with larger vegetables than a conventional garden.

We planted our seeds about 10 days ago. Right now we have 6 Heirloom Tomato plants. Since our grow cabinet is so small (21" x 15") we will have to choose at least 3 of the weakest plants to cull in the next couple of weeks so that we can get the best yield from our crop. I can't wait to eat fresh, flavorful homegrown tomatoes this fall and winter.

We've started very small. As we learn the process we plan to expand the system until we are growing the bulk of our veggies and produce on a year round basis. After research and speaking with people who have done this, I have learned that this is a relatively simple and low labor intensive process that we can accomplish in a small spare room. This will not only help us with our budget and our health, but will also help to ensure that our food is as nutritional and chemical free as possible.

Janet and I are confident that by embarking on this venture together and supporting each other that we will ultimately be successful and will live richer, healthier and longer lives as a result of our commitment to become healthier and more self sufficient.