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.