Getting Our Family Healthier

One of my big goals this new year is to work on being healthier.  I don't want to make this a resolution, but with the new year, I decided to start thinking of new goals, or at least re-focusing on goals that I have already had.

My husband and I decided to start eating healthier, both us and our kids.  For me, this is a tricky goal.  I want to be healthy, but I have horrible food cravings for foods that are not good for me and unfortunately often give in.  Also, my kids are on the very, very bottom of the growth scale, so I am always conscious of how much they eat.  They are also very very picky eaters.  With the new year, my husband and I started green smoothies again.  Much to my elated surprise, my oldest son is loving them.  He liked them the first time we started and he was about 18 months old, but quit  eating them soon after.  Now he is still loving them and having easily 2 shakes at breakfast.  This means he is getting some sort of leafy green (kale, swiss chard, red leaf lettuce, etc.), and fruits.  Finally I can feel like he is getting some good nutrition easily instead of fighting to get him to eat healthy foods.  My twins, on the other hand, barely touch the shakes.  The good news is that they are eating vegetables much better than before so I'm not as concerned with their healthy eating.  I am trying to be better at meal planning which means I am not so crazed at dinner time trying to figure out what to cook.  Also, I spend less money and waste less food because I know what to buy for when.

One of my friends, another twin mom, is doing a sort of biggest loser challenge on her blog http://goddessinprogressblog.com.  I wasn't sure about joining in, but I decided that it is only ten dollars to contribute to the winning prize.  Also, I figure maybe this would be a friendly way for me to challenge myself and have some accountability.  So here I am joining in.  My husband just bought new running shoes.  I bought new ones last summer, and probably only used them and handful of times so far.  The other thing that we splurged on is winter gear.  We do have a treadmill, but I like getting outside and I can take the twins with me even if it is just a walk and no running.

I actually can't wait to start exercising again.  My husband mentioned getting up early on alternate days so that we can go running without having to push the kids and then getting it out of the way.  I really don't like getting up early and for me the thought of getting up at 5:30am instead of my usual 6:45am is not something I am looking forward to.  I am however, looking forward to feeling better and getting in shape and hopefully liking how my body is going to look.

Plans are in motion to get at least a couple of my goals met.  Hopefully my husband and I can set a good example for our kids early in life so that they don't have to deal with for addiction, food cravings, inability to stop eating even when they are full, and hopefully they will be active.  Hopefully all of this will help them be healthy kids and even grow into healthy adults.

Amy

Meal Planning And An Organized Life

Some of my twin mom friends are really great at being organized, or at least they are better at being organized than I am.  It's probbaly always going to be a struggle for me and always going to be a work in progress, but I get motivated by these moms to keep working at it.

I am in the process of working on my menu for March.  I have never done even a weekly menu plan before, but am now truly motivated after spending the day with my mom after her lymph node biopsy only to come home and not have anything ready for dinner for me to take to work or for my family to have.  Thankfully my husband is able to cook a couple of hot dogs and broccoli for the kids.  If I had a meal plan in place, I could have been better prepared.  With my mom now mostly likely having chemo and radiation, I'm sure that we will be spending more time with her to help out since I am home during the day and everyone else works.  Since I go to work at night, it will be even more important for me to have a plan in place for meals.

Right now I am trying to get a bunch of recipes together to put on my monthly plan.  I plan to have breakfast lunch and dinner mapped out, but can be a lot more flexible with these meals.  I will have a few crockpot recipes as well as some easy/quick recipes that I can easily make before I leave for work, or that my husband can make after I leave.  After I get my meals planned, I will make a shopping list and make sure that I follow it and go shopping after I have satisfied my hunger.  This weekend, I went shopping just before supper, and what a mistake that was.  I bought a whole bunch of foods that I shouldn't be eating and now it will either go to waste or I will need to eat things that I don't want/need to eat.

I am hoping that I can plan meals that are healthy and that the kids will like.  After I get my meals organized, I am going to move on to more areas that I need to get organized, like cleaning the house, laundry, etc.  That way I won't feel like I am doing it all at once and I won't get so overwhelmed that I just put it off over and over and over.  Hopefully this will mean that I have more time to do fun things with the kids like salad spinner spin art, rubber stamping using the new stamps that I got for the bargin price of $.97  and $1.97, coloring, painting, and many other fun play things.

Amy