My Nutrition Upgrade: Week 1

A couple of weeks ago I shared an opportunity for you to sign up for an online nutrition program called My Nutrition Upgrade through my partners over at Ultimate Bootcamp.  I’m not sure if any of you ended up taking advantage of the price discount through F&F, but Week 1 started last week and I wanted to share some tidbits from my experience so far.

To refresh your memories, I was excited about this program because it offered three different tracks for people to choose from.  I signed up for the Go Getter track, the program for those happy with their weight but just wanting to take their performance to the next level.

Here are some of my favorite parts so far:

• The program stresses the “pursuit of progress, not perfection.” <—Love. Nobody is perfect.
• The program states that even making one nutrition upgrade a day is a victory. <—This is totally in line with my approach of taking one small step at a time instead of a large overhaul with daunting goals that are bound to fail in the long run.
• The program states that it is NOT a diet, but a new way at looking at food in general.  <—Diets don’t work.  Lifestyle changes do.  Simple as that.

Every Monday and Thursday we receive our “upgrades” for the week.  This comes in an email format, with printed information and about a 15 minute video featuring the nutrition coach.  The first upgrade last week was to get to know your seven super foods: fruits, veggies, whole grains, legumes, lean proteins, nuts/seeds, and calcium sources.

The emails/video did go into more detail about each category by providing examples of each, referring to benefits of eating them, etc.  I found this part to be more of a refresher for me, but I did get a few takeaways and some new recipe ideas to try.  Some tips I wanted to share with you guys:

• Try to get three superfoods into every meal that you eat.  This takes some creativity.
• Black rice! Ever tried it?  When I choose to eat rice instead of quinoa or other whole grains, I always go brown. I’m going to try black rice next time.
• What to look for when picking out bread — at least 3 grams of dietary fiber and whole wheat has to be listed in some form in the ingredients list.

I also enjoyed the superfood cheat sheet that includes serving sizes.  That is something I could definitely improve on.  I think I usually eat three times the amount of a regular serving size!

The second upgrade last week was to clean the junk out of your house.  Biggest tip = just remove the trigger foods, which is definitely something I did after my snacky week two weeks ago!  Upgrade # 2 also talked a LOT about how to read labels and decipher what healthy advertising is true versus what isn’t.  It’s kind of ridiculous how UN-regulated food labels are!

So… so far so good! There’s also access 24-7 to a nutrition coach via the Google Group created for your track, so it’s nice to see what other people in my category are asking.  I asked for a few new grab and go breakfast ideas to switch things up from my usual cottage cheese weekday breakfast.  I’ll likely try some of these out next week.

Finally, here’s a quick snapshot of some of my blog-worthy eats last week:

From left to right/top to bottom:

Dinners…

• Sunday night lazy dinner = tuna melts with a side of heirloom tomatoes
• Crock pot pork and apples, with a side of sautéed Swiss chard and another side of roasted turnips (had this for dinner on Monday and Tuesday)
• Grilled peach and basil ravioli with a pesto sauce and shrimp <—the ravioli was one of our purchases when we went to SOWA this summer.
• Next two pics are from our anniversary dinner at The Fireplace.  My appetizer was the butternut squash bisque and my entrée was the Dijon and chive crusted cod with quinoa, cranberry, walnut, apple, and spinach.
• Friday night vegetarian wedding dinner option: salad and stuffed pepper <–YUM

Lunches…

• Roasted eggplant and apple quinoa salad over greens with walnuts and dried cranberries (had this for lunch Monday through Wednesday)
• Southwestern sweet potato salad — lunch for Thursday and Friday

Unpictured meals include all my cottage cheese breakfasts, an egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin on Saturday morning, and the dinner from the Greek dance on Saturday night.

Are any of you also participating in My Nutrition Upgrade?  Any thoughts or ideas on superfoods or cleaning out the junk?

Disclaimer / Disclosure:  I was not paid to write this post, but I was provided a free registration in the program in exchange for writing a review and sharing my experiences with my readers.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.