Making cabbage rolls with quinoa instead of rice

First Quarter Healthy Eating

April 17, 2021 Leave a comment

It’s been a little over halfway in April and, like Jill, I feel it’s time to evaluate my first quarter results.

First Quarter Healthy Eating
From January to March I definitely have been eating better. How can I tell? My heart rate. The results on the scale. Tracking my food. Adding more veggies. Planning my meals.

Healthy eating is always a goal, so I didn’t make it one of my words or a resolution for 2021. Now I kinda wished I did so I could legit say I nailed it.

I focused on what to have for lunch and dinner. The veggie challenge helped here. Buying lots of vegetables and healthy foods made it easier. Here are photos of a few of my first quarter healthy eating highlights. Among others I enjoyed making and eating eggplant lasagna,cabbage rolls, quinoa veggie salad and roasted vegetables.

roasting eggplant for lasagna
I substituted one layer of noodles with roasted eggplant in lasagna.
For first quarter healthy eating I made cabbage rolls with quinoa instead of rice
Making cabbage rolls with quinoa instead of rice.
For first quarter healthy eating, I used the VitaMix to chop veggies the size of quinoa.
Using the VitaMix to chop veggies into the size of quinoa. It’s hard to cut carrots, cucumbers, and cauliflower this small without the help of a machine!
first quarter healthy eating involved using parchment paper and spray olive oil for roasting veggies.
My trick for easy roasting is to use parchment paper and spray the olive oil on to make it easy. I probably roasting three times more veggies because it is easier for clean up.

I know I posted some of my veggie omelets and fritatta. Buying frozen precut vegetables is also a shortcut of mine.

First Quarter Activity
One of my words in 2021 is activity. If I count tracking and cooking as activity, I did pretty well in first quarter. But if I think of activity as exercise… well… I definitely left room for improvement there. I’ve definitely done better with healthy eating in first quarter than I have with the exercise. While I have been getting on my treadmill for some Zoom meetings where I don’t have to talk, I just wasn’t as physically active as I wanted to be.

Now that the weather has improved in NE Ohio, last week I was able to go bike riding twice. This is actually second quarter activity.

Snapshot of early April bike rides
Snapshot of early April bike rides.

I’ve also done a couple of beautiful walks outside with friends. I will save this for for next quarter, but it’s been a recent highlight.

Here’s looking forward to improvement during second quarter 2021 on my activity, fit and strong 2021 3 words!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *