Next bad habits...nutrition

I know I said I was going to address my first bad habit, not using my water bottle, but I came across a couple obstacles:
#1 The water in our town doesn't taste very good. With 7 people and 1 fridge, there is not room for a Brita. Unfortunately, our respective families are not quite as enlightened as us and are not into us installing a filtration device on the faucet.
#2. I like lemon in my water and it's great to detoxify but again, there isn't any room in my fridge/counter top for lemons.
I'm still going to stay away from bottled water, but I won't drink that much water until a. we have our own place or b. my new job has a water cooler where I can simultaneously fill up on yummy water and hot gossip (just kidding about the second part.) For now I am going to continue to drink a lot of iced tea and unfortunately Vitamin Water.

(More than anything else, I can't wait to have our own kitchen [and bathroom...I've shared one shower with 7 people my whole life, except while I was at college. I can't wait for my own. In fact, I am requiring that when Joe and I buy a house, I get a bathroom all to myself. I deserve it.])

So instead, I've decided to focus on bad habits # 6, 9, 10, 12. They all sort of belong together, as they are all related to nutrition.
6. We eat a lot of sugar. I'm very nutrition conscious and to me, sugar is almost as bad as trans-fats. Even worse than sugar is High-Fructose Corn Syrup, which is in everything.
9. We don't eat enough protein. There are plenty of healthy ways to get protein as a vegetarian, but we need to focus on making sure we get it into our diet.
10. We don't take vitamins or minerals.
12. We spend too much money eating out. We don't eat out at healthy restaurants either. Typical meals are cheese (not rBGH-free), fat, non-organic vegetable laden. Not healthy, and expensive.

So related to this, I am going to set the following goals for us:
1. Eat 6 home cooked meals a day, including a high protein breakfast.
2. Eliminate High-Fructose Corn Syrup from our diet completely. Though I'm an obsessive label reader, I learned from Allie's Answers that USDA organic products cannot have HFCS in it. As she points out, you have to be careful that it's an organic product, not just one that has organic ingredients, but as one of our main goals is to eat as much organic foods as possible, this is a no-brainer.
3. Stop eating sugar and artificial sweeteners. There are so many acceptable alternatives: agave nectar, stevia, xylitol. Even honey is better then those things, though not so much for my blood sugar. (I'm hypoglycemic...if I eat too much sugar it gives me a bad headache and makes me want to sleep for hours. If I go too long without eating, my sugar drops and I have a hard time breathing, get really dizzy and cold sweats. It's a mess. And some doctors consider it to be a form of pre-diabetes). Most Americans still haven't realized how bad sugar is. But sugar is the new salt. If you don't believe me, read this book. It will change your life.
4. Eat at least one hundred grams of protein a day.
5. Eat at least 5 servings of produce a day. This applies to Joe more than me. He hates vegetables. I have to come up with some creative ways to get him to eat them.
6. Take vitamins. I have a lot of risk factors for osteoporosis, so getting calcium needs to be a priority for me.
7. This one only applies to me: log all of my food. Here is my problem: I eat like I'm still in college, but my metabolism has taken a turn for the worse. I have put on more weight than I like to admit and the time has come for me to do something about it. The fact is, I want to be a jammer in roller derby, but right now, I don't have the right build for it. Jammers are skinny and fast. I want to lose enough weight to be skinny and fast. (Plus my old clothes don't fit anymore...I have some cute stuff sitting in boxes just waiting to be worn again.)


(For anyone not familiar with roller derby, here is a video from the Gem City Rollergirls (from Dayton, OH) with all the details you need.)




So, this is going to be much harder to overcome then getting rid of all my beauty items, though I really had a hard time parting with my sunscreens. I'm going to do my best and pass on any helpful tips I find along the way.