Eating better

Well since I have no excuse to be a sloth anymore now that I can exercise and use the bike again, I figured I better get my food intake back in order. I put on 10 - 15 pounds in the 2.5 months I wasn't regularly exercising!

I am very keen on incorporating a lot of different flavors and textures into my food -- especially if it is lower calorie/fat food -- in order to keep an interesting and satisfying variety. So it was with great interest I read about this meal plan. What really peeves me about this meal plan and a million others like it is that it calls for things like 1/4 of a mango. Can anyone tell me who eats just 1/4 of a mango?? And what am I supposed to do with the rest of the mango??? Throw it out?? There're no other mango-oriented items on this eating plan!!! Same goes for 1/2 of a banana. Dammit that's annoying and, more importantly, discouraging. Not only is it impractical, but all those half-used ingredients we might toss in the trash are wasteful, consumerist, environmentally-unfriendly, and costly!

What I need is a healthy meal plan for the real world that assumes reapplication of partially used ingredients. Would it have killed Kathy McManus, R.D. (Registered Dietician) to design the eating plan to say, I don't know, use the remainder of the mango in a perky salsa to put on some chicken or fish or, say, incorporate it into that shrimp meal Wednesday night, or chop it up and put it in the yogurt Thurdsay morning? GAAAHHH!!

No one is going to use just 1/4 of a mango, or 1/2 of a banana! Be real! Make a food plan that is delicious, healthful, AND practical.