Groceries

Well, despite my want for cereal before bed last night, I actually went for the best choice: strawberries and a vanilla protein shake. Yummmm.

I had the strawberries because they're finally coming into season, which means they are affordable enough to buy fresh. I can't wait for mid-May, where one can buy 2lb packages for $3. I also had the strawberries because I went grocery shopping.

On a limited budget, it's hard to buy groceries as often as fresh produce warrants. One suggestion is to buy fresh produce up to two times per week, and at least once. For us, I'm lucky if we get fresh produce every two weeks, which means that I often have to buy the produce that's going to last (ie frozen or apples or oranges), and so when I buy groceries, I go super-crazy on produce and get to eat extremely healthy for a few days. After the first few days, it starts to wane as we start to run out of different types of produce. I almost always buy vegetables frozen- I tend not to eat veggies if I can't cook them (exceptions are spinach leaves and romaine lettuce/leafy greens, and carrots). However, this last grocery trip, I bought celery and I intend to actually eat it for once. I'll probably end up cooking most of it. Celery goes great in anything Italian or spicy.

I had a change in mindset earlier today. After reading this statement many times, it finally sank in: "Train like an athlete, strive to be an athlete, and the body composition will follow." Especially after finding out during Exercise Testing & Prescription how low my VO2max really is, I would love to train to be an athlete. My new goal is to get my VO2max levels up to a minimum of 40 ml/kg/min (avg-to-high in my age group) from a predicted 33 ml/kg/min. This would get me running most of the time once things heal up, and be able to perform some endurance exercises that now elude me. However, when I measured my heart rate the other day on the elliptical, I worked out at 85% of my maxHR for 20 minutes. My goal is to now get to 30 minutes at 85%. These goals should be accomplished within the next 6 weeks (or at least the latter one; VO2max is fairly difficult to change but is possible).