Sunday, September 8, 2013

Getting Back to Healthy Eating!

The past year has been very crazy and hectic with Grad school and teaching. This past summer (2013) I worked at New Albany Country Club as a camp counselor for their Club Lane Kidz Camp. It was a great deal of fun. During my time at the country club I had access to the work out facilities and spent some time training for a half marathon, which I successfully completed in 3:20:12! While I was training
I didn't always have the best eating habits which I feel put me at a disadvantage. Now that the school year has begun and I am on a more rigid schedule than I was this summer I don't have as much time to work out. This has led to my need to get back on a much more healthy diet and try to find time daily to at least walk for a little while. I am planning on continuing my running, while toned down a bit from my half marathon training, this fall and already have 5 more 5k/4 milers scheduled along with 3-4 more that I want to complete.

This week will begin my new journey to eating healthy and getting myself into much better shape. I sat down with my favorite cookbook (Better Homes and Gardens: Eat Well Lose Weight) to plan out our meals for the week. I then headed straight to the grocery store and got all of the ingredients, with the exception of the Tarragon I needed since Kroger was out of it! We began with tonights meal, Walking Tacos. With them being called Walking Tacos one would think that this is a portable meal, although I didn't make it in its intended fashion, but yet just put it on the plate as you would any taco salad. This is one of my favorite meals to make. It is very simple, delicious, and yet healthy for you! This is one meal that certainly helps with Mexican cravings that might lead to the desire to have the less healthy options of Taco Bell or Chipotle.

Another tricky thing to overcome in the journey to healthy eating is lunches for school everyday. My daily schedule at school has me eating lunch much earlier than I typically would. My lunchtime at school starts at 10:45 and ends at 11:35. Normally eating at 11am wouldn't bother me, except I don't get out of school until 4pm which makes for a very long afternoon and by the time I am finished with school I am starving and with close to an hour drive home it can be very difficult to not stop and get a small snack on my way. Recently I have been packing extra fruit in my lunch box along with some pretzels to help curb that mid-afternoon need to snack.