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Eating Healthier thoughts / Car stuff

July 26th, 2012 at 05:05 am

My dad had quite a few diet/healthy eating books in his closet. Most of them I just roll my eyes at, but one did actually intrigue me. I read it in less than an hour - mostly common sense, but just not practiced. It's called "The Full-Plate Diet" and it essentially advocates working up to eating 40+ grams of fiber daily (real foods) and of course drinking plenty of water to go with it. It suggests to eat the fiber rich foods first, then other foods. It has lists of the top 5 fiber foods in various categories (fruit, veggies, grains, something else.) The only food in any of the top 5 categories I don't eat is avacado.

I'm thinking I'm going to really try to get myself working towards eating this way. My normal breakfast is pretty fiber rich - rolled oats w/raisins, a banana and orange juice. I think I'll change the OJ with an actual orange (though I'll want to have that cut up the night before - especially during on school days.)

My lunches and dinners are all over the place. I had gotten away from relying on the vege meats, but they have slowly come back into my diet with a vengence. So .. I'd like to make a change there as well.

I think I'll start buying the fresh spinach again (I stopped after too many packages went bad before I used them up - sometimes before I even opened them ...) Lunch could basically be a big salad of spinach, shredded carrots and squash, diced cauliflower and broccli, silvered almonds, and more rasins. (I love raisins ...) This is something I can take to school with me pretty easily and keep in the teacher fridge until lunch. I may also add a cut up apple or orange or pear on the side.

To make this easier on myself (at first at least) I'll probably buy the pre-diced stuff. I'm WAY too likely to just let it sit in the fridge and mold if I buy stuff I have to actually dice and chop ...

For dinner, a sweet potato and quinoa or baked beans or lentils... (vegetarian!).

Then for a dessert/snack I could do a smoothie with frozen berries and a banana. Also for snacking I need to keep grapes in the fridge.

That would be a pretty fiber rich diet, and also a good amount of protein and numerous vitamins. It also is made up of all foods that I like and enjoy. It also is basically a vegan diet ... which I don't think would be a particularily bad way for me to go considering how my body tends to react to dairy products anymore.. (Poor Thrifty Ray and her DD3 got the pleasure of seeing my body react to the overload of ice cream from Ghiradelli's.. it was SO good, but almost not worth it ... almost..)I won't go strictly vegan because being strictly vegan is more of a whole lifestyle and being vegetarian is difficult enough at times. Besides, when the cafeteria serves grilled cheese and tomato soup ... I want to treat myself!! Smile(I think they had it maybe 6 or 7 times this last school year. Twice during Lent.)

I don't know exactly how this will affect my grocery budget ... but having a good idea of how much I was spending on junk food ... well, I think my overall spending will go down.

Anyway, I won't be able to go full force into it because I have a lot of food in my freezer that I need to use up first. I think though that what I'll do is do breakfast and lunch like I outlined, and then use up the food in the freezer for dinner. Then, once it's gone, go to my dinner plan.

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I've been emailing back and forth with the internet sales person about the Versa for under $15k. I'd finally apologized to him for taking his time, but that I didn't think it was worth driving 200+ miles to see if the car was a good deal for me or not. He wrote back and asked me what *would* make it a good deal ... So I told him $13,500 walk out the door price after trade in. Then I described to him my car. Big Grin I was pretty prolific in outlining it's good and bad points. Figured it didn't hurt to take a chance and see if a deal could be made... I have the feeling that he doesn't think it is a workable bargain because I haven't heard back from him today.

I think what I'm going to do when I get back is take my car to the local mechanic. Then I'll tell them that I am trying to decide whether or not to take a chance on my car lasting (w/o major repairs) for another year, or trying to sell it and get a newish car. I'll ask him to look over my car carefully and see if there are ANY safety concerns (such as the things holding the engine in, etc.) I'll also ask for a quote on the timing belt (because that absolutely will have to be done if I keep the car much longer.)

I read an article on yahoo today about how to get your car past 100k. In the comment section there were dozens of multiple people commenting that getting past 100k was nothing, and that they had cars easily make the 200k and more with no worries. My car made it to 100k with the only real major repair being the air conditioning going out (around the 50k mile mark.) After 100k is when the computer died (which led to my electric locks unlocking doors but not locking, the windshield wiper functioning from medium speed and up only, cruise control not functioning, the radio frying, and the airbags being disabled. I think it was also around this time that the cig lighter stopped working - for charging my phone.) I'm on my third or fourth starter (can't remember for sure.) So ... I'm kind of curious to see if I *could* get my car to 200k ... but I've got to admit that I'm really getting tired of driving something where about the only thing that works well (usually) is the ac/heat. That isn't a good reason to get a new car though... especially when the only way I can do it is to take out a loan ...

If I look at what I've spent on my car in the last year beyond the normal oil changes/new tires/change fluids stuff, it is nowhere near what a car payment would be. Even if the timing belt/water thingy cost $1k, divided by 12 it still would be less than a car payment. So ... I guess what I am thinking is that I am going to wait. If something else comes up with my car, then I'll be ready with having ideas of where to go to replace it. In the meantime I will be doing heavy duty saving in order to have the smallest possible loan when the time comes. (This is of course assuming that the mechanic doesn't tell me some expensive repairs are needed beyond the timing belt .. then I'll have to reconsider, as well as maybe get a second opinion.)

5 Responses to “Eating Healthier thoughts / Car stuff”

  1. ceejay74 Says:
    1343276037

    Good luck! The food plan sounds delicious, but I understand it's hard to be the sole cook. I don't know how successful I'd be at cooking from scratch all the time if it was just me doing it. I definitely relied on veggie meats a lot when I was a bachelor chick! Smile
    Having a menu that uses all the fresh produce is key, I think. Otherwise it will just go bad. You could throw any leftover spinach after your salad into your next smoothie. Smile

  2. mamasita Says:
    1343307062

    I always hate letting produce go bad. Even worse is when produce goes bad right after you buy it, through no fault of your own, makes me so mad!

    I think you will really like the high fiber diet, so long as you drink plenty of water with it! I like the idea of eating the high fiber foods first, because you may not want to eat the less healthy things after all, being so full. I need to keep that in mind myself.

  3. rob62521 Says:
    1343315438

    I hate letting any food go bad as well. Hopefully you can figure out a system that works for you. Sounds like a great diet plan that keeps you full instead of starving one.

  4. Monkey Mama Says:
    1343329951

    On the car thing, I think regular maintenance (in my opinion, basically just oil changes/checking fluid levels) and a GOOD mechanic is really all there is to it. I think there is also an element of getting problems checked out right away and not putting off important maintenance due to lack of funds. But interesting, our mechanic tends to be pretty hands off. If it ain't broke we don't fix it - my family has multiple cars last 20-ish years. I am starting to think our mechanic is the most of it. We aren't very particular when it comes to cars - we go for low cost - they still last forever.

    Third is probably realizing that regular maintenance of an aging car is infinitely less expensive than going newer. Many people throw away their cars the first time they have to make a $300 basic/expected repair. I won't say the cars I had never had any problems - one ate belts and oil - the other ate water pumps. But, they were pretty predictable and I fixed them to keep the car running reliably - not a big deal to me. The numbers were pretty black and white.

    Keep in mind that other's experiences are not apples to oranges. I have no doubt that our mild climate/no snow/no sea air/garaged cars/"cars that never sit in traffic" are going to have a heck of a lot more life than average. IT still surprises me how little brake work we have needed since moving to Sac (more long freeway drives/less commuting and little traffic).

  5. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1343343926

    Thanks everyone.

    MM - I think for my car the biggest difference is that in it's 15 years or so of life, it has only spent less than 1% of that time in any kind of garage or carport or covered parking. I've also had my ahem... fair share of accidents (none of which were reported to insurance thankfully - none serious, but enough to shake the car up.) The one which I think may have hurt the things holding my engine in happened a couple of years ago at a park - I foolishly drove forward instead of reversing, and drove right up on top of one of those cement parking blocks! I was able to reverse myself off of it ... but after that I started to have some trouble with my speedomoter.

    I'm really hoping that whenever I get my next car that I'll be free of some of the more idiotic accidents I've had in my current car ... one can only hope, right? Smile That my car's lasted this long with me as it's driver really is a miracle. More of a miracle (in a sense) is that I have a squeaky clean driving record. Smile

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