Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle

Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle
Meal Plan - Take Four: The Farmer's Market Diet

After working off of a meal plan for a month, I've allowed myself to 'graduate' into the world of spontaneous eating again--based on the framework that I adopted in my planned meals. No, I'm not completely falling off the horse. After eating perfectly clean, well-timed, properly portioned meals for an entire month, it's now much easier to stick to the good habits that I built into the plan such as eating five to six small meals per day, filling up on vegetables and keeping an eye on protein levels (making sure I'm getting enough with each meal), eating good fats, and not skipping snacks or pre or post-workout meals.

Getting off the plan has some benefits as well. Since I'm a firm believer in variety, now I can throw in all kinds of new foods and am not stuck in a never-ending rut of sameness. While under the same framework, I'm just swapping foods: proteins for proteins, vegetables for vegetables, fats for fats, etc.

There is no better way to really take advantage of variety than with local farmers' markets. Each week local growers and producers bring their in-season vegetables, fruits, eggs, etc., to the market. The vegetables change with the weather, starting with cabbages and green onions in the spring to tomatoes and summer squashes, and finally the root vegetables of fall. While I'm there, I can pick up a dozen farm fresh eggs (with either brown, white or even green and blue shells), a locally made salsa, freshly baked breads from bakers who don't use ingredients other than your traditional flours, water, yeast, etc. Sometimes I can even find rarities such as local walnuts or popcorn.

The market strategy that I've used for the last two weeks includes bringing a twenty-dollar bill to the market and picking up a week's worth of food. Except for a few items: fresh fish from the fish market, canned or pouch tuna, Greek yogurt, bananas and avocados (can not be grown locally) and a few staples like rice wine vinegar from the grocery store. I have a large bag of rice and another of whole wheat berries, and some miscellaneous baking ingredients such as buckwheat flour, etc. From these, I can create rice dishes, pastas, etc. (note: homemade pasta is far superior to store bought.)

So far so good. Not only have I enjoyed new found variety in my meals, my meal costs continue to shrink along with the little inch of fat around my belly--maybe it's even less than an inch now.

Until next time, go do something athletic!