Good Morning!

I hope y’all had a great weekend, mine was pretty eventful.

WEEKEND RE-CAP

Nick got into town Friday night and we went and had dinner with some friends of ours.  On Saturday, we were both up early getting my car to his dad’s shop for some work.  They were going to try and fix some of the problems I found out about, but unfortunately, it’s time for a new car. 

I continued to cry a little on Saturday.  This has been such a wonderful car and when I get a new car, you can expect a good-bye post!  I’m so thankful for his loyalty throughout the past 7 years!  This has been the first major problem I’ve ever had with it.  So after they tried a few things, Nick and I started looking at cars.  I know I want a car with excellent gas mileage because I drive A LOT!  We stopped by the Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, and Chevy dealerships in our area.  I didn’t leave with a car, but I left with an idea of what I want.  I’ve spent the weekend thinking it through and working out my budget.  I’ll be talking to them again today and we’ll see what happens with that.  Once we were done & I was personally exhausted from car shopping, we got ready for dinner with some of my friends from High School.  Yes, I still get together with a large group of my highschool friends when everyone is in town.  There were a lot of new people since I haven’t been able to see everyone in a long time.   A lot of girlfriends/boyfriends & wives/husbands.  It was fun though and I loved seeing my best friend, Patty, and her husband while they were in town for a short while.  We left early so I could go to Whole Foods for dinner.  They have this awesome special called 4 for 4, but I tend to say “Where’s my 4×4?” when I talk about it.  You pick 4 of the “Health Starts Here” Approved options for only $4!

The mango & black-eyed pea option you see were pretty spicy with jalepeno’s, but I loved that added flavor!  I also got garlicky kale & a white bean and spinach salad.  I love these because I don’t have to eat them all, I’m eating the leftovers today for lunch!  After we finished at Whole Foods, we went to Patty’s in-law’s to spend more time with them!  We were there til after midnight which is way past my usual bed time, but that quality time was well worth it with these two.

Sunday, Nick helped me work out some more options on getting a new car and I wrote out a new budget.  Then we took the boat out.  I didn’t snag any good pictures.  The water was perfect though and the weather was nice!  We enjoyed our time out there, but boating exhausts my body!  Also, I never smell as bad as I do when I get done boating.  It’s disgusting!  We rounded out our weekend by having dinner with Nick’s family. 

HEALTH STARTS HERE – WEEK 1 “PLANT THE SEEDS OF SUCCESS!”

It has officially been one week since I started the Health Starts Here Challenge! Last week at our first meeting, we discussed planting the seeds of success and I got some great ideas on recipes & quick meals.  The points were (1) Planning is Key (2) Stocking (3) Cooking (4) Avoiding Waste.  I always take away some great points from these weekly meetings.  For planning, we talked about finding common ingredients throughout the week so you can re-use a lot of your groceries.  This is really difficult for me.  Create a meal plan to stick by.  Stock your pantry with some basics: Beans, Rice, Vegetable Stock, Grains, & especially spices!  With this diet, food can turn out bland if you don’t diligently incorporate spices and flavor!  Whole Foods provides great cooking demos on their website and we watched a few of those for part 3, Cooking.  Lastly, we discussed avoiding waste.  You can do this by planning so you incorporate all of your groceries throughout the week, but I also learned that you should not put banana, avocado, or apple next to other foods.  They let off gases that spoil the food it’s around.  This was a huge take-away point for me!

I love how Mary Lindsey, our healthy eating specialist, has something for us to try each week.  We had a lot of questions at Orientation about dairy products, so she let us sample non-dairy milk.  My favorite was the Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk.

One other take-away from our session last Monday night was “Starting late is better than never starting!” which is obvious, but a reminder that is always nice to hear again & again.  It can also apply to a wide variety of areas in life.  Our next session is tonight at 6pm.  I might not be able to make it due to my car situation, but Mary Lindsey sends great re-cap e-mails so if I find something unique I’ll be sure to share it!

I’ll be completely honest, this challenge has proven to be difficult at times.  I did really great during the week at work & home, but when Nick got in town and my car died and we were out and about a lot, I had to make a few “cheats” throughout the weekend, but I tried to stay healthy during it.  I didn’t splurge on a hamburger & french fries or anything like that, but I did have a few exceptions – mostly with oil because if you go out somewhere, everyone cooks with oil.  I’m back on track today though and I’m determined to stay on track throughout the rest of the week!

1 Week down, 3 more to go!

• What did you do this weekend?
• Share your favorite healthy eating tip!