National Nutrition Month and my half-marathon training has made me become more aware of the food I put into my body.  The last 2 weeks I focused on coloring my plate-Week 1 and Week 2.  This week I plan to focus on my nutritional intake in relation to my half-marathon training, while continuing to color my plate with healthy, nutritious food.

    I had planned to document all my nutritional intake in my running journal but this happened:

     I regrettably left my journal within reach of Abby’s little 2 year old hands.  She managed to rip up my journal and then she dumped it in the toilet bow which thankfully was clean.  This does not make for a functional journal anymore…..thank you Abby.

     Luckily as I was going through my drawers last week I found this:

     The Fitbook was actually my first choice for a journal but by the time I decided I was going to use one I didn’t have enough time to get one shipped to me, I had looked through my drawers but I must have missed this one.  The Fitbook is a great compact journal that incudes space for 12 weeks of planning, goal setting, strength training, cardio, food intake and more.  It is easy to carry around in your gym back or purse and comes with a cute Fitbook pen too!  Check out the Fitlosophy web site to get your own.

     What kind of exercise and/or nutritional journal do you use?

     As I work on my nutritional intake in relation to my training this week I also wanted to talk about the NuVal™ Nutritional Scoring System.  I first learned about NuVal™ on Tina Haupert’s blog Trading Up Downtown, although it seemed like a good system I never gave it much thought until I saw it in my supermarket last week.

     NuVal™ is a nutritional scoring system that scores food on a scale from 1-100.  The higher the NuVal™ score the more nutritious the food.  The scoring system takes in account the nutrients and nutrition factors in a food, both the good and the not so good and compiles it into one number.  By looking at this number you can choose the more nutritional option when buying foods such as canned goods, breads, fruits, veggies and more.  This system makes it easy to make an informed choice about the quality of food you provide to your family.

     Lucky for me the NuVal™ score has made it’s appearance in the King Kullens in my area.  Check out the NuVal™ website for more information on the scoring system and all the locations you can currently find the score.

     Have you seen the NuVal™ score in stores near you and if so have you used it to make better nutritional decisions?