I know it isn't New Year's yet, but I am thinking about health stuff BEFORE the holidays hit and we all eat (and drink) ourselves into a stupor.
So I am wondering, what are your resolutions? For you? For your family? How are you going to get through the holiday season-do you have a plan for keeping the typical indulgences to a minimum?
I have a lot of things I eventually want to accomplish for myself and my family, but it is a slow going process. I am not an all or nothing type-I always need to make gradual change in order to make it stick.
But anyway, my main goal, not just for the holidays, but as an overall lifestyle change, is to get processed food out of our house. We don't eat a lot of processed foods, but I am trying to make strides to reduce it even further. For example-soup. Bill loves soup, and sometimes takes a can for lunch. But the sodium in those things is insane. Another example is pasta sauce. Have you ever looked at the sugar content in jarred sauce??? CRAZY!!!! Taking a can of crushed or diced or whatever kind of tomatoes (and canned are generally healthier than fresh out of season) and making a quick sauce with garlic and herbs or whatever has ZERO sugar and tastes about a million times better, and can be done in 20 minutes.
Because of my health, I have become a label reader, and the hidden sugars in our foods is astronomical. They are everywhere-and it all adds up. Not to mention the sodium in anything processed. Bill already has pre-hypertention, we do not need to add to the problem.
I am limiting the kids' snacks a lot more now-cutting out the crackers, goldfish and snack mix type foods as much as possible-even cereals I am limiting as snacks, depending on the type. (I still let them snack on these things, but not as often) Truth be told, they don't snack often-they only have a morning snack at school, and we rarely have an afternoon snack either. But I am trying to get them to eat more healthful choices, or at least things that have ingredient lists that aren't a mile long. I mean lay's potato chips, while not health food AT ALL have only 3 ingredients-and goldfish??? FULL of preservatives and fake color and everything else. I know they will eat them, and that is ok, but I want their day to day foods to be primarily fresher, fewer ingredients, and just healthier in general. They may already be pre-disposed to problems because I am their mom, so they need to eat better. And Bill will eat what I put in front of him, so as long as I make it easy for him and once in a while give him a "treat" that he loves (man, it sounds like I am talking about a dog, lmao), he will be fine and healthier by default.
My secondary goal in all of this is to reduce sugar for all of us. We all eat too much of it. I am going to try and reduce their juice intake, and while I am still going to bake cookies for Christmas, I am going to cut back on the varieties so we aren't eating them for months on end. And continue to label read and make smarter choices.
I have no plan to get through the holidays though-and we end up having so many family functions-I need some tips to keep myself from gorging on junk non stop during the season!!!!
Another goal of mine is to work harder on my stress management techniques. I stink at this, but I am trying to get better. Deep breathing is helping me, but I need to get more into yoga and meditations and such. Stress is such a killer for my health, and makes me so snappy with the kids.
I want to get my mind and body healthy so that next year we can try to have another baby!!!!
As for me, I saw pictures of myself from last year and while it wasn't a big weight difference, it was enough. I looked better, felt better, my clothes fit better, and I was just healthier.
So I told EJ I'm starting to eat healthier again. it's not about losing weight (although I hope that will happen), it's about the fact that I'm literally scared to find out my cholesterol. He's on board--he's gained some weight himself.
As part of this, I want to start serving more veggies and fruit. We've really slacked on this lately and it's not good for the whole family, including Ethan. We need to get back into that habit.
Removing as much sugar as possible. "Little Sugar Addicts" by Kathleen DesMaisons is a good book. We are still paying for how we started Stephen off. I need to get him off soda and eat a breakfast not high in sugar(he likes dessert cereals). Do more bulk cooking sessions. I just did one because I had a bunch of chick to use. It's so nice having meals in the freezer. I'm going to do a turkey cooking session after thanksgiving. I hate cooking.
Figure out how to get healthy all around and this includes losing this weight. I can no longer call it baby weight when it has been a year.
Make more time for my husband and have more fun with him.
I think this year I want to figure out how to have more fun. Life is too short to be serious. My laundry can wait!
I'm going to ditto all of this (except I'll have to start with the weight loss after Feb LOL).
I've figured out lately that my priorities are really out of whack. I'm basically letting the best years of my life pass me by because I'm doing everything I can to keep my job. So I can be happy. But I'm not because I'm stressed out over work all the time. It makes *no* sense.
And when I get very stressed out, I get lost in my own thoughts and don't spend enough quality time with Meghan or Mike. That has got to change.
