Going Green

Next step to being Heart Healthy? A better diet!

Last week I told you about how I am working on working out more. It has actually gone really well! We didn't go to the gym on Monday (tired from snowshoeing on Sunday) and on Tuesday morning my legs were all antsy from not working out. Granted it's only been a couple weeks, but I do feel like working out is becoming more a part of my routine.

I also mentioned last week that I am doing some Wellness Coaching. This week we focused on vegetables. I suck at eating vegetables.

Up to now I have pretty much only enjoyed canned peas, green beans, peppers, onions, tomatoes in the form of sauce or in pasta and some salad (romaine or spinach preferably). (Corn doesn't really count...especially when I eat corn on the cob like candy) I think I eat 4-5 servings of vegetables a week on average. Not anywhere close to the recommend 5-7 servings of fruit and veggies a day (although I usually have 2-3 servings a fruit every day).

My goal for these next two weeks, besides keeping up with exercising, it to eat at least 7 servings of vegetables per week. I know that is still below where it is recommended, but it's all about baby steps.

My coach gave me some ideas of how to add more vegetables into my diet.

• Stir fry with a lot of veggies
• Lasagna with added veggies
• Omelets with veggies
• Adding additional veggies to tomato sauce
• Sweet potatoes
• Looking for new recipes with veggies

When we went to the store tonight we got quite a few bags of frozen veggies. Frozen not canned (less sodium and more nutrients) and not fresh (since I don't want anything to go bad and waste money as a result) except for a sweet potato.

Tonight we had breakfast burritos with eggs, potatoes, cheese and onions and peppers. Yay peppers and onions! The peppers were frozen and came in strips, and they worked really well! I love peppers so not too difficult to eat that kind of vegetable. We had the onions left over from something a couple weeks ago and they were still good so in they went.

We also got zucchini squash, will be great to add to tomato sauce

Penne with vegetables for two, we would add more peas but a great start

We always have frozen corn and we had some frozen peas from when we made shepard's pie

Mostly I think I just need to make it more of a routine to buy more veggies (frozen or fresh) and then incorporate them into my meals. I keep reading all these great posts on meal planning and concepts where you have a set of recipes that are your go to recipes for each "genre" of food. I want to work on having more "go-to" meals that have more vegetables and also have easy ways to add vegetables to the meals I already make.

My coach recommended mealsmatter.org. I just did a little browsing around and the "Quick Meals" section looks great. It breaks out meals by categories like "6 Ingredients or Less," "Make Aheads," and "Vegetarian." It provides the nutritional information for all of the dishes which is great too.

I'll be sure to keep you updated and let you know if I find any especially delicious recipes.