Staying Healthy: Eating & Exercise (3/13 – 3/19)

I noticed this past week that it’s been keeping a food diary for nearly two years, tracking what I eat, the calories, and my exercise on MyFitnessPal. I still plan my meals the day before and pretty much stick with what I’ve planned. I’m going to continue to the best of my ability while we’re traveling as keeping a diary (as well as continuing to measure every portion) has been a big contributor to my weight loss.

One issue we’re facing now is we’re running out of ingredients and don’t want to replace them before we leave unless absolutely necessary. For example, we no longer have any sugar other than a little bit of brown. We use very little sugar as it is, but it’s a necessary ingredient in namasu or three bean salad, for example, so I’m no longer making those salads. We also only had a very little oil left, both vegetable and olive. We really didn’t want to buy more of these ingredients as we know we won’t finish them but we decided vegetable oil at the least was a necessity and picked up a small bottle last week. We’ll have to toss anything that’s left over, which may or may not be most of a container, but we know we’re coming to a place where we’ll be using even more prepared foods which don’t require separate ingredients.

Pickings were somewhat slim at the stores last week. We bought sushi at Costco for our dinner on Monday, but the quality has gone w-a-y down and it was disappointing. Walmart’s vegan selections were also very picked over. Between what we found and already had on hand, we still managed to come up with some tasty, healthy meals last week.

Sunday: Chick’n pot pie

Monday: Sushi; cucumber slices; apple slices

Tuesday: Cacio & pepe; roasted zucchini

Wednesday: Tofu & pepper stir fry; rice

Thursday: Zaru soba; hayayakko (chilled tofu); cucumber slices

Friday: Mini pizzas with roasted vegetables

Saturday: Shrimp risotto; roasted zucchini & peppers

There won’t be a lot of cooking going on next week. Everything other than the tofu and broccoli stir fry requires little preparation.

• Breakfast for dinner: waffles & vegan sausage

• Mini pizzas

• Tofu & broccoli in spicy peanut sauce

• Margherita pizza

• Japanese seafood pancake with shrimp & squid

• Indian coconut squash dal

• Tofu with Thai red curry sauce

We had matcha roll cake for dessert a couple of evenings last week. We hadn’t seen it in the stores for a while, so when we spotted it at Times Market we picked one up. Otherwise we’ve been alternating between red velvet cupcakes and coconut cake for our dessert each evening. We should be thoroughly tired of each by the time we finish them and be ready to move on to something different.

We’re always finding interesting things to stop and look at out on the Maha’ulepu Trail. This past week we spotted a cairn made by other hikers, a lone sea grape plant, strange orange mushrooms, and a giant curving root (from the side it looks like a giant iguana crossing the trail).

We got in four good walks this past week. Although not as strenuous as our hikes, we always get in more than an hour’s worth of walking on our food shopping day, and it’s always far more tiring than our hikes. We did our regular Maha’ulepu hikes Wednesday through Friday. We spent two days at the beach (Brett still hiked the trail) on Tuesday and Saturday, and took our regular day off on Sunday. The ocean was very rough on Thursday and Friday, and as always we paused along the way on our hikes to watch the waves pound the cliffs, sending spray up and over the top. The sight is always breathtaking.