What Does Healthy Mean?

I just spent the most amazing three days with my Food $ense family. Learning and Sharing and Growing. It fed my heart and made my love for the people who I work and serve grow. They are each so full of compassion and desire to help and serve the world and start by doing so at their doorsteps. 

It just made me realize all the more what a journey Health is. 

Being Healthy isn't and end, there isn't a You're Healthy Now finish line. 

There is no ultimate number, weight, size, cholesterol, blood pressure that means "you've made it - now you get to be done" Isn't that an interesting way of looking at things. 

As I looked around the conference room, I saw men and women that were different as we could possibly be and yet all passionate and trying to improve and educate about the exact same thing. Being Healthy

We drank some soda, we ate some chocolate, we moved our bodies and consumed a swimming pool's worth of water. We talked about how to keep trying and motivating people to make change. To be accepting of those who aren't ready yet, and to embrace little changes forward and to celebrate every single victory!

I am so glad you are here. I am so glad that you are on this journey, or that you are thinking about beginning this journey, or even that you are ready to start again. I hope you find happiness and encouragement here, I hope you find strength and support. and Love. 

Happy Birthday - Happy Choices

So I had a birthday this week. A big birthday - one of the Pre-Milestone birthdays where there is a big number on a black balloon and all the decorations have tombstones on them. And while the numbers don't bother me too much, I have spent a little bit of time thinking about what my birthday next year is going to be like.

As I thought about it, I decided that I wanted to look back at my year and think - Wow!! I made that an amazing year.

So while I talk a lot about making little changes and tackling those things that are hard to do one step at a time. I have decided that right now, for this moment and this challenge I am going to take a great big giant leap!

Way way WAY back when I started this blog, I was invited to do a behavioral challenge.  I was excited about the blog and the new lifestyle and I jumped in head first. I decided that I was going to give up my soda habit. You can read about my crazy excitement Here. I re-read the post and I got all excited and motivated again (and I was a little bit sad that I had worked so hard and it hadn't "stuck")

I'd like to think that we all know that soda is bad for you.  If you don't, then I should probably tell you - Soda is really really Bad for you. If you don't believe me - which you totally should.. Here is a quick article that outlines the prominent reasons. Everything from excess sugar, to empty calories - scary chemicals and the fact that you aren't drinking "better" things (like water). Soda is bad, like really not good bad, Bad.

Another reason I need to give it up is the cost. We recently re-worked our budget and our food costs shocked me. (And the scary amount of money I was spending on beverage of choice was Really scary)  I felt really sad that I was using so much of our family's money on something that was so bad for me.

This discovery lead me to really examine that kind of role model that I was being for my kids. Was I setting them an example that I wanted them to follow. How many of us, when we go out to eat get ourselves a sugary soda and then order our kids milk or juice. Seems kinda like we aren't making the best choices for ourselves.

This is a really big jump for me. I am not going to cut down, or scale back. I am going to give it all up. I have kept around a bad habit that is costing my health, my wallet and my family something that I am no longer willing to give up.  Sometimes you just have to say, "Enough is Enough!" and hopefully I'll look back at my birthday next year and think, "Thanks for loving yourself enough to do hard things - You're worth IT!"   Here's to another amazing 39!!

Celebrating a little overwhelming insanity

I had a dream last night. I was a bridesmaid in the wedding of a high school friend and I had lost my dress. I was wearing to slips, one as a slip and the other as what I thought was a jaunty looking cardigan to cover the slip-y-ness of the first one. I was running around the wedding chapel / funeral home / 500 room mausoleum and was completely lost and kept encountering things like people playing a roulette wheel and a room with kids in a fountain eating the pennies which were chocolate coins. It was a very strange dream.

Why do I tell you about this strange dream? So you can know that I am losing my mind? No, because I have been thinking about how crazy and hard life gets sometimes.

Life is also good and filled with wonderful things, but there are times when it can seem really hard and really overwhelming and really just... too much.

I woke up from my dream feeling frazzled and almost out of breath from the panic of looking for the dress and having no idea where I was. I spent most of the morning trying to shake that feeling and think of something better. - Then I got an email that reminding me to Celebrate What is Right With the World. 

There is help if you are someone who is struggling around the holidays with food insecurity and hunger. If you are needing more long term assistance - Here is that too. 

And for all of us, those struggling and those who are not - there is no more perfect time that the holidays to celebrate what is right with the world. 

Sit your family down for a simple meal and enjoy each other's company. Talk about your favorite family traditions and what you like best (or what is the worst) thing about this time of year.  Stand with your family in the kitchen and prepare a meal and talk about what kind of things you are looking forward to this winter season, perhaps sleigh riding or a snow fort.

Yes, I know it is cold outside and we have all done our fair share of complaining about how cold it is. But let's do a little bit of celebrating too. Celebrate how good the cold air feels in your lungs when you are breathing heavy shoveling snow or Celebrate how silent the night is when the flakes of snow are big and fat and falling so slow they almost seem to stand still in the sky.

As I am sitting here writing the chubby little birds are flying in and out of the trees in the backyard to their homes in the ivy bushes, they are chirping at the last little bit of the day's sunlight and at each other.  They remind me that we all seem to struggle a little but we don't have to stomp and growl about it - we can fly and sing.

My Very Own - My Plate - Really, My Plate

I have been doing some training for work. This will be my third year that I have done this nutrition training and I actually think I might be catching on to it little bit of it.  Just a little bit.

There is so much to know in the world of nutrition. More than I will probably ever understand, but I have good news for myself, and good news for You too.  We don't have to be nutritionists or registered dietitians to be able to eat healthy and take good care of our families.

One of the most simple things we can do is to follow the My Plate guidelines.  How simple is that... just look at your plate, divide in into sections and fill each one

This is like dinner - color by numbers. I can do that! 

On the My Plate website there are more helps that you will ever need. Just pick the type of help for your personality, or for your mood, or even for the season.   All of our bodies and lifestyles and personalities are so different, My Plate can fit into whatever your needs are, that is why it is called "My Plate" because it works for each of us. 

If you are feeling like you want some personalized help, a great place to start is Super Tracker.  It is  being updated all the time and you can personalize it as much as you want to . 

There is a lot to learn ( I am discovering) about nutrition and health, but I am also learning that I no longer can say, " I don't know" and use that as an excuse.   I know that I need to look for whole grains when I am buying cereal. I know that keywords like "whole wheat" and "multi-grain" are okay, but they aren't what I am looking for. I need to make half my grains whole. 

I know that when I buy fruit in cans I need to look for them to be packed in their own juices or in water - Not packed in syrup - or better yet, I should just buy them whole and fresh. I can focus on adding more fruit to my family's diet.  

We don't need to know about phospholipids and LDL, we don't need to completely understand the grams that going into making calories. We don't need to be a nutritionist or a registered dietician to make the best choices for ourselves and for our families and the people that we love and take care of.

My Plate has made it easy, and keeps on making it even easier to make good choices and to learn about what is best for our bodies. Tell me what you like best about My Plate, or how it has changed your life.  -- (That was a total plead for comments) Also, it was a secret plug for the Food $ense video challenge!

Decisions, decisions

I have been thinking about decisions lately. About the decision making process we as people go through and how changes come into our life when we make decisions to change.

My middle son has been contemplating trying out for an extra play soccer team. He played this year but has been extremely casual about it. I talked to him about how he needed to dedicate his time to this if he was going to commit to this team. That it wasn't going to keep being any fun unless he worked to get better and that practice once a week wasn't going to be enough. That he was going to need to give up other things if he decided that he wanted to play on this team. This was a really hard decision for him to make and he really struggled to feel like he was making the right choice for him.

It got me really examining my own life and why I make the things that I do important. Because whether we realize it or not all those little choices add up to big changes or lack of the same.

This month's healthy challenge at work has been about little changes. First little changes in diet and then little changes in activities and then putting them both together. Hopefully over a period of time it will equal really positive results.

And that has my mind ruminating on deciding to make changes. The first step is the actual decision to do it. If you want to make a menu plan, you just need to grab a pen and paper and sit down and write it out. If you are going to be more active, you need to stand up from your computer and head outside. And it all starts with the decision to do it.

What are you going to decide to do today?

Healthy Challenges - Week Three

Last week was week three of the Healthy Choices Challenge at work. It was the first week of choosing more physical activity. It was actually a really hard week to make active choices. It was cold and rainy, and the much-anticipated warm spring weather didn't come. I wanted to do nothing but sit on my couch under a blanket and hibernate.

But that made it a good “challenge” for me. I suppose life doesn’t qualify as a challenge if things are going to be easy. 

And so I parked my car at the far end of the parking lot, and walked to the store in the blowing wind and the rain. I played soccer with my son and didn't grumble about the cold. I got up off my couch and danced with the Wii, and when I was about to put off doing some yoga or taking that extra trip down the stairs, I said to myself, “Nope, you are going to do this.” And I did. Instead of killing 30 minutes playing a game on my phone, I spent that time doing something active. It was usually with my kids, but sometimes it was just something that wasn't sitting down.  I can see how a more active lifestyle is much more about a change of thinking than I previously thought. 

What bad habits are costing me

It has almost been two weeks since I started my behavior challenge at work and decided to give up soda. Well, I actually decided to cut back on soda, but I have ended up not having any at all. It was much easier for me to just cut it out of my routine than try and cut back on what I was consuming.

I very much would enjoy the ritual of going to the local convenience store, getting out of my house and saying "hi" to the clerks. It made a nice break in my day. I would usually do it as a reward for finishing a task that I had set out for myself to accomplish.

It has been both easier and harder than I expected to give up soda. I haven't really missed the actual drink, but I have very much missed the ritual of it. Anyway, I am doing pretty good, I am very glad that I set the goal to just cut my consumption in half and that has given me a little bit of freedom to make choices about what I wanted to consume, instead of saying "none" and then feeling deprived.

As another incentive, and one that I hadn't realized is that I have saved a little bit of money. I didn't do refill cups and so my habit was costing me almost 2.00$ a day. And that was at a minimum, if I had kids with me it was usually more than that as they always wanted something too. It has been a little bit shocking to see the money not disappear so fast out of my wallet.

Do you have a habit that is costing your wallet as well as your health?  I read this article this morning about the cost of convenience treats and fast food. I didn't realize how much those few dollars can add up so quickly. When this challenge ends this is going to give me a lot more incentive to keep up with my better behaviors and not only save my health, but perhaps save for a new pairs of shoes too!

Giving up "the Drink"

Part of my employment responsibility includes “modeling behavior.” That means we get to practice what we teach.  I heard an old quote the other day and wrote it down on a post-it and put it up on my fridge it says, “Parents tell, but never teach, unless they practice, what they preach.”  My job is kinda like that; I can’t tell y’all how awesome it is to eat healthy on a budget with Big Mac & fries on my breath.

So this month my fellow employees and I are working on four different challenges, divided into 4 weeks. The first week we have been challenged to give up 250 empty calories. The second week, we have been asked to increase our activity by 250 calories and the third and fourth weeks we are supposed to do both.  I can’t wait for week two, that is going to go right along with my walking everywhere to take better care of myself, but this first week is going to be like taming a lion for me. I’ll tell you why.

Soda is my vice; I drink a certain one; I drink a lot of it, and I drink it often.  It would, perhaps, not be even too strong of a word to use the word addiction. I crave it as soon as I wake up in the morning; it is my comfort food and my coping mechanism, and my treat to myself whenever I think I have done something worth treating. I am honestly salivating just writing about how much I love the stuff. But it is BAD for me, and I mean really really bad, like BAD bad….. BAAAAAAAAAD. And I know it.

And so, for week one of my behavior modeling, I will give up 250 calories of the stuff (and actually I am going to give up almost 300 calories of the stuff, because I am going to limit myself to two cans a day). I won’t even embarrass myself by saying how hard this is going to be.  I may turn into a raving lunatic or be in the back of my closet crying – but I hope it goes better than that.  I don’t plan to take it back up next week either. This is going to be a permanent change for me. I have stocked my kitchen with limes for my water, and bought a few yummy beverage alternatives like green tea and the sugar-free flavored drink mixes that I like. I even did a practice run this weekend and I Did It!

This is going to be a challenge for me, but I know that it is important.  Soda is a large portion of our grocery budget and it really is terrible for me; hopefully, I can remember how dedicated I feel at this moment and remember that it is much better to try and keep trying than decide it is not worth the risk of failing. Even little changes matter a lot, and so here we go. 

Getting to Know you

Getting to know all about me
Like singing with the King of Siam

"Getting to know all about you.

Getting to like you
Hoping that you like me."

Welcome to my getting to know you, I like lots of things: food, writing, knitting, decorating and yoga.

The things I do are take care of my kids. We are a 4+3 family ranging in ages from 14 years to 11 months.

I keep the Food $ense Mommy blog
I named it Snappily Ever After
Like a princess in a fairytale,
I want a happy ending.
I am also want forest creatures
to do my chores.

I am passionate about what Food Sense teaches - Because I have had to live it before.

I am passionate about what we teach
because I love my family.

I deal with all the big food issues our own clients can face.

A small grocery budget

Wanting to provide healthy and nutritious food.

How do I prepare that kind of food? My skill level is Red Ranger - hot pocket level. We have picky eaters, kids who prefer food endorsed by cartoons and adults that prefer food endorsed by the coke a cola company.

But what I love most about my job is the trying. Trying one thing a day, making one choice that is a better way to live. You won't be changing your whole world today, probably not even tomorrow, but after you have a few tomorrows behind you - then you are changing.

Last week for the first time, I picked out a mango, I cut and peeled a mango, and I made something with it. And that something turned out good and 4 of my 5 kids ate it.

I have made muffins with quinoa twice, and my family devoured them twice.

Stress Challenge

Where I work we have a lot of on-going training and continuing education. We get to do some awesome things that help us to live happier and healthier lives.

January’s training was all about stress and how we can deal with it in healthy ways. I have been thinking about stress management a great deal because I could write the text book on unhealthy ways to deal with stress. I also feel like I have done more reading than the average person on this subject.

But once again, knowing what helps doesn't always mean I do those things. I think being stressed out and over-worked just seem to go with being human in modern society. I know that almost everyone I come in contact with seems to be busy running around, juggling commitments, and trying to please everyone. One thing we all seem to have in common is we are trying to do it all, we feel like we aren't, and we feel guilty about it.

 How you manage stress is a personal thing: some people need to take a step back, and others need to take a step up; some people need to head out into the world, and others need to pull in from it.

Learning to deal with stress in your own life requires getting to know yourself. I wish I could say that I have finally got it all figured out now that I finished the January employer challenge. I’d love to say I am a pro at dealing with the stress in life--the truth is just the opposite. This last month has been one of the most stressful of recent history. I have been over-eating, not sleeping, grouching at everyone, saying "yes" to things I shouldn't, and ignoring many things I know I should be doing.

ARGH!!

 And so I am attempting to do just a few things to deal with my stress levels. They aren't life altering, but they help. Take a few deep breaths (this really does make a difference). And remember on those extra tough days to take a step back from the situation and say to yourself, "This, too, shall pass."

Each day is a gift, even the really awful ones. Be thankful for something small each and every day. Some day it will be those smalls things that made all the difference in our lives.