Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Well hello there, May!


The wonderful month of May is here, and I'd like to thank my friend Coren. Coren lives way out on the west coast, in a state called California. She suggested to me that my challenge might be to eat the recommended daily allowance of fruits and vegetables every day of the month. This might not seem like much of a stretch for a lot of people. If you glance at the food pyramid I drew based on my previous eating habits, you will see why I consider this to be a challenge. I actually had to spend some time researching the food pyramid, because despite having aced my nutrition class in college, I had forgotten how much I was supposed to eat. Let me tell you what I learned: the new food pyramid that the government designed a few years ago SUCKS! On the website (www.mypyramid.gov) you can type in your height, weight and activity level and it will give you recommendations on how much of each food group to eat. BUT- the recommendations are in ounces and cups! It recommends I eat 2 cups of fruit and 3 cups of veggies. Yeah right, like I know how much that is. Why can't they just call one apple or one banana or one orange a serving? Then it would be simple! So I looked up the OLD food pyramid, which says I should get 3-5 servings of veggies and 2-4 of fruit. Much easier for a girl like me to understand. So, with that being said, I have officially started eating more vruits (that's my combo of fruits and veggies). I even ate a banana with breakfast, and consumed an apple at work instead of some sort of kringle a patient had shared with us. Maybe by eating more of the healthy stuff I'll cut down somewhat on that wonderful group that currently makes up the base of my food pyramid!

2 comments:

  1. I enjoy that you include pictures with your posts.

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  2. I'm with you on the whole "cups are confusing" bit. Welcome to nutrition! :) In essence, 1/2 cup of vruit is one of the old "servings," so this means your goal is the high end of the old range (4 fruit, 5 veggie). Remember 5 a day? It's really 9 a day now, but I think they thought that was too intimidating, so now they say "More matters." Doesn't that give you warm fuzzies? :) Hehe, anyway, there's my official nutrition bit.
    P.S. It totally counts if the fruit is on ice cream...frozen raspberries or strawberries on chocolate ice cream sounds just about perfect--for a chocolate eater like yourself, that is (especially since it's EASTER and not Lent anymore! Yay Jesus!).

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