Goal Update for February

My workload has definitely thrown me off track last month. With just four blog posts in a month...could you believe that?  It happens sometimes, I guess.  I cringe at the thought of giving the end of month update specifically because I have not accomplished much...and this update is five days late!  But I have given my word, and though this is late, here's a short rundown for the February goals:

Continue with the diet plan - to have increased servings of fruits and veggies

I am definitely having more fruits and veggies in my diet, but I feel I could still do better.  I get around 2-3 servings per day of combined fruits and veggies.  I am aiming to have four or more servings per day. 

Be more strict in limiting sodium intake to a maximum of 1,500 mg

I don't have the exact figures right now as I am not able to update my fitness pal account (my bad!).  But I still maintain a log of my food intake.  I have a separate planner I use solely for jotting down the food I eat, the number of daily steps, and my water intake.  I think I still go over 1,500 mg of salt in some days because I don't always prepare my own food.  

Healthy habit 2: Be consistent with 7 - 8 glasses of water (when doing normal activities)

This habit has not yet kicked in quite well.  There are days I manage 7 or 8  glasses of water.  But on the average, I am just on the 5th or 6th glass.  I have not given up though.  This seems to be easy for some, but it's taking me a while.  I'm getting there.

Take 6,000 steps per day (minimum)

I got good news for this one.  Although I may have gone below the 6000 steps in some days, my average for last month is 7,577 steps.  Being busy at work helped with the walking thing.  I had to go back and forth between two offices (yep I have two offices now).  But I feel better with all that walking, knowing I am more active and not confined to an office chair.

There you go.  I hope I perform better this month.

How I Personally Manage My Salt Intake

Is salt really bad for health?  I've done some browsing on the internet and I have read varying opinions about salt.  Should we really take it out from our daily diet, run away from it like it's some kind of poison?  For the life of me, if I keep reading more, I'll probably go insane. But we need to know. So we keep searching and weeding out the good or credible information and those sites that clearly promote a certain propaganda. 

Until such matters are resolved and those scientists and doctors and medical practitioners come into agreement, we either take this side or that side or stay in the middle perhaps?  I think I'll take the last option instead.  After all, my doctor didn't tell me to have a no-salt diet but merely to limit my salt (sodium) intake.  Even the DASH diet plan only limits the salt.  They have two versions of it, the high salt (2,300 mg/day) and the low salt diet (1,500 mg/day).  Take note that I am only limiting my salt intake because there are studies that implicates the correlation between high sodium consumption with essential hypertension.  Besides that, I believe in the concept of moderation.  Too much of anything, even a good one becomes a poison right?

So how do I manage limiting my salt intake to 1,500 mg?  Here are a few steps I took that are not too drastic for me (but it could be for you, so just do it one at a time if you're not in any health risk).

DASH To The Grocery

Yesterday afternoon was by far the longest time I have spent on a very short grocery list.  It took me an hour and a half and I was not even able to buy all.  Talk about wasting so much time, but not totally.  I count the walking as exercise, although my recently injured left knee was already ready to buckle. So what's on my list?  Just these few items:

• Cereal
• Milk (ugh! Coffee drinkers like me repel milk.  Just the thought of drinking a glass of it makes me squirm, or worse gag)
• Pineapple Juice
• Pitted Prunes
• Fresh fruit (I was able to buy sliced and cut melon....that was my dinner later)
• Salad (you know, Caesar's and the likes.  No pre-packed ones so I skipped it.  You had to choose the ingredients. Will do that another day as I was already tired from walking)
• Cucumber

See?  Normally that list could have taken me no more than 15 minutes.  The thing is, I had to read the labels, particularly for low sodium content.  Having a good amount of potassium is a great bonus.  The good thing about doing this is I realized that even if I don't shop at Healthy Options (kind of expensive also), I could find healthy choices at a regular grocery store.  

Here are some of the items that I bought, minus the melon (gone in 360 seconds), the cucumber (camera-shy), the milk and a few items not on the original list :