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Just about everyone wants to eat better, but budgetary
constraints sometimes make healthy eating a difficult goal. It
is important, however, to buy the healthiest food you can
afford, whether you are cooking only for yourself or for a
growing family.

One fun and easy way to cook healthy food while still saving
money is to grow your own herbs and spices. Unlike a vegetable
garden, that can take up lots of space and involve a lot of
work, a simple herb garden can be easily grown in a windowsill
or similar small space. There are kits available for just a few
dollars that contain the seeds, pots and other items needed to
start an herb garden, or you can save even more money by buying
the seeds and planters yourself.

Cooking with herbs and spices is a great way to enjoy healthy
cooking on a budget. Spices and herbs are a great way to flavor
dishes without the need for heavy sauces, butter or other high
fat preparations. Growing your own herbs give the grower a great
deal of control over those herbs. This is important, since many
prepared herbs and spices contain large amounts of sodium.

Another excellent way to save money while still eating a healthy
diet is to buy fresh fruits and vegetables when they are in
season in your local area. Buying locally grown produce is often
the best way to guarantee freshness and quality, and in season
produce is generally less expensive since it does not need to be
shipped hundreds or even thousands of miles.

Watching the sales at the local grocery stores is important to
everyone, but it is particularly important to those who are
trying to eat right on a limited budget. Using grocery store
sales to stock up on such important staples as whole grain
cereals, breads and whole wheat flour is a great way to make
even the most limited food budget stretch a bit further.

Using coupons is another great way to make a food budget
stretch. Cutting coupons is a great way to save money on
products you already buy, as is signing up for various frequent
buyer programs and other money savings opportunities.

In addition to manufacturers coupons, many grocery store chains
offer customer loyalty cards which allow their customers to save
money on products they buy regularly. These grocery store
loyalty programs often print coupons for products customers have
bought in the past, and they can be great ways to save
significant amounts of money. Since most of these programs are
free, there is really no downside to their use.

Stocking up on meats, seafood and poultry during store sales is
another great way to save significant amounts of money. Buying a
second hand chest freezer may be a good investment, particularly
for those people with large families to feed. Having a large
freezer space allows customers to take advantage of grocery
store sales and stock up on chicken, beef, lamb, fish and pork
when they are on sale.

Careful meal planning is another great way to save money while
still providing healthy meals for yourself and your family.
Planning meals well ahead of time allows you to take advantage
of what is already in your freezer in order to create delicious,
nutritious meals without spending any additional money.

One great thing about most fruits, vegetables and beans is their
low cost. Another great feature of these staples is their high
nutritional value. Combining these two important features is a
great way to make your budget stretch while providing your
family with nutritious, healthy foods.

For instance, why not make that expensive skirt steak go further
by interspersing chunks of expensive beef with chunks of
inexpensive pineapples or green peppers. Not only will you get
twice as much food for your money, but you will enjoy a
healthier meal as well.

No matter what strategies you choose to make your food budget
stretch when cooking healthy meals, we think you will find that
cooking healthy is worth any sacrifice it may require. Healthy
cooking will pay big dividends in increased health and fitness,
as well as increased energy levels.

Most sports come with injuries to accompany them. Although
swimming is, by most standards, not a sport associated with high
risk of injury, it does have it’s own problems. By far the
biggest source of sidelining swimming injuries is the shoulder.

I was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, sometimes doing double
workouts and 15,000 meters per day. I swam mostly freestyle and
backstroke. I never had a shoulder problem until my college
years. I had been training with pull buoy and paddles throughout
my freshman year of college. I started getting a little pain in
my left shoulder, but being 19 and feeling invincible, I swam
through the pain and was sure that a little rest after the
season would fix me right up. Well I did take the rest and ended
up in a lot more pain when I resumed swimming a few months
later! The doctors said it was rotator cuff tendonitis. I
rehabbed and within a few more months I was back to swimming
every day, but my shoulder has never been the same since.

There are a variety of ways to give yourself a shoulder injury
in swimming. “Overuse” is often what doctors will say. This is a
pretty general term and doesn’t help many athletes when they’re
trying to accomplish their goals and avoid getting hurt! Some of
the other ways include:

•Improper Technique- reaching too far and over-rotating,
crossing over in freestyle when pulling •Sudden increase in
training distance or intensity •The use of pull buoys and hand
paddles •Swimming only freestyle at every workout •Unbalanced
strength development

Preventative Measures

1. One of the most important things in stroke technique when it
comes to freestyle and avoiding shoulder injuries is to bend
your elbows underwater during the pull. This is proper form and
will keep you from putting your shoulder in an awkward position
that leads to a rotator cuff problem.

2. When you’ve had some time away from swimming and are resuming
training, always ease back into it. If, for example, you train
with weights and had a 3-month layoff, you wouldn’t try to max
out on your bench press the first day back. The same applies to
swimming. Instead of jumping back in and resuming the 5,000
meters you were doing before your break, start with something
very light, like 1000 the first day, 1200 the next, etc.

3. Avoid the use of pull buoys and paddles. Although it is
tempting, buoys merely give you a false sense of floatation and
put unnecessary tension on your joints, especially your
shoulders. Although there are paddles designed not to cause
shoulder problems, most of the paddles out there are not needed
in training, and will cause shoulder problems if you give it
enough time.

4. Swimming only freestyle at all of your workouts may seem like
a good idea if you are training for a triathlon, but I would not
recommend it. First of all, you will gain more from cross
training with other strokes. And most importantly, excess in any
one stroke leads to a higher probability of an “overuse” injury.

5. If you breath to only one side, you will develop the muscles
more on one side than the other, and this could cause a
breakdown and a shoulder problem. Incorporate bilateral
breathing into your workouts to avoid this. If it’s extremely
awkward at first, start with just breathing bilaterally in
warm-up and warm-down, and slowly add it into the rest of your
workouts as it becomes more comfortable.

Post-Rehab

If you are just getting over a shoulder injury and are jumping
back in the pool, put on a pair of fins. Zoomers or Hydro Finz
work the best. That way you are accomplishing 3 things: 1)
taking some pressure off your shoulders, 2) getting a great
cardiovascular workout, and 3) building strength in your legs
for swimming. One “good” thing about shoulder injuries is that
they force us to slow down, and give us a chance to work on
drills and stroke technique while we get back to health. And
from what I’ve seen as a coach, many triathletes can use a
little slowing down when it comes to improving their swimming!