March Monthly Challenge: Greens and push-ups
I will proudly be wearing this shirt while in Vegas for the opening of the tourney in a few weeks. If you are an Arizona alumni and proud of your Cats, here’s the link to buy this shirt.
Go Fit Girl!’s March Monthly Challenge comes to you from your fellow readers.
I asked for input from my readers on the February Monthly Challenge Facebook event page and got some great comments and ideas.
It’s March and that means St. Patrick’s Day and March Madness. (Go Cats! Grrrooowwwwllll!)
Nutrition: Going with a mixture of the two “holidays” that take place in March, we are gonna call the nutrition challenge the Getting in your Leafy Greens March Madness.
According to the Healthy Eating page on the San Francisco Chronicle website, sfgate.com, we should eat at least three to four servings of dark green leafy vegetables each week. The article lists some green leafy vegetables: spinach, romaine lettuce, broccoli, collard greens, kale, mustard greens, bok choy, turnip greens, dark green leafy lettuce, watercress and mesclun.
Green leafy vegetables have a number of essential nutrients, including fiber, calcium, iron, vitamins A and C and folate, and may lower your risk for chronic health issues.
If the green leafy is raw a serving is 1 cup, if it is cooked a serving is 1⁄2 cup.
When doing my research I saw a lot of hits stating that eating green leafy veggies can help prevent Type 2 Diabetes.
The challenge for us in March will be to try to get green leafy vegetables in 3-4 times a week. This will be a great way to try new things, try cooking in a different way and start or maintain a healthy habit.
Just a friendly reminder that if you smother your vegetables (green or otherwise) in cheese, butter, dressing, oil, etc. it’s not healthy anymore. So try to limit that and work with healthy seasonings.
Exercise: Let’s get Mad (aka crazy while having some fun) about pushups. Can you get in 500 “push-ups” a week?
Push-ups can come in a variety of forms and styles. And this article explains how to do 10 different kinds of push-ups. Plank is also a great variation of a push-up. This video does a good job of showing how to do plank correctly. And let’s not forget chataranga.
This article with videos shows some crazy varieties. If you try some of these, please be careful and make sure you are ready to try them, especially the ones with your legs and feet up against the wall.
Feel free to post your progress in the blog comments below or on the Facebook event page.