You’ve been walking for a while now, staying the course of working towards a healthy lifestyle. Good for You! Walking is one of the best things you can do to begin getting your body back into the shape it was meant to be. Walking with a purpose and tracking your progress every day, each week, each month is important to you achieving your goal of perhaps losing some weight, or just wanting to build up your stamina so you can keep up with your kids or maybe even your grandkids. Tracking your distance, the time its taking you to walk that distance and an overview of the number of calories your burning doing it, can provide you with all the incentive you need to stay on your course.
One good way to do this is to use a good, accurate pedometer like the Omron HJ322U It accurately counts your steps when the unit is flat, vertical, or horizontal. It also tracks "brisk steps" separately from regular steps along with distance and calories burned. The pedometer is also able to connect to Omronwellness.com via USB to upload information. So, it’s a great way to keep you honest while providing you with the means to see just how well you're improving by logging into your Omron account on the web.
But tracking your activity is just one aspect of your journey to a healthier you. The other part and an important one is to make sure you're changing up your eating habits. Eating more fruits and vegetable, ones that are high in fiber, low in sugar and can provide you with an alternative means of getting leaner protein. The best thing about this time of the year is that the farmer's markets are opening up all over your local areas.
From locally grown fruits like blueberries and strawberries to various types of squash, from green to butternut, they are a great alternative to using regular pasta by substituting their fiber deliciousness into your favorite pasta recipes. And let’s not forget about the leafy vegetables that are growing and coming into season. Like kale, spinach, various sprouts, and beans. The one nice thing about all this abundance of local food is that you know the farmers personally, they live by you, they rely on your patronage for their living so they are more than willing to answer any questions on how they grow their produce.
The best thing about most of these farms is that they have migrated themselves to mostly organically grown produce. They know that the trend now is to eat healthy and in order to sell their crops, they need to conform to the requirements of the people that are shopping for good, clean produce.
After all, research has shown that there are no surprises that what you put into your body has a direct impact on its overall performance! Shenkeri Chandramohan, founder of "FoodToHeal", has a good way of putting it “Your gut and brain work like the gears in a car,” she explains. “Food acts as the oil – sustenance for every component that makes up your body, especially your brain. Without the right sustenance, you may not have a well-oiled machine to be at your best.”
Now one of the benefits of patronizing your local farmer's markets is that they are selling everything now, that is in season. This means you are getting the best price for those crops that are at their peak of life. And it's at its freshest because you’re getting it yourself, right off the farmers truck! With your going to the local farmers market, your eliminating a couple of middlemen. The produce buyers that purchase the crops, and then send them to a warehouse to be loaded on trucks and then shipped and delivered to a local food store.
Now if you're paying attention to this you may realize that besides the extra costs that are being added to that “local” produce like paying the produce buyer, paying the shipping, handling, and storage until its delivered to that local store. Then finally paying the store personnel for stocking that same produce on their produce racks. Now the costs may not be very much, they actually can’t be because the prices have to be comparable. But you will be charged an additional price instead of buying at that farmer's market. And you're getting the produce at its freshest, then if you went to that grocery store. Think about it, the shelf life on that fresh produce has already decreased because of the extra time it's taking for all that shipping and handling.
So, what are you waiting for, get out, check your local papers and Facebook posts on where and when those local farmers are selling their fresh goods. You’re not only going to be saving money by buying from them, but you’re getting the benefits of eating the freshest foods you can find!
See you at the local Farmers Stand…….Your organic loving friends here at PedometersUSA.com.