My thoughts and practices on healthy eating and living

People have commented before on how lucky I must be to have managed to not gain or fail to lose excess baby weight or weight in general. To be honest up until recently I always kind of sidestepped the issue with most people except my closest sister. So the other day we were discussing in depth what we REALLY do that might make a difference in our lifestyle. It made me think that some of what I consider "normal" might seem like a revelation to some. Here are my secrets to maintaining my healthy weight including during pregnancy.

• First of all it gives me an initial break to have been a healthy weight as a child and to never have had a time where I had a large weight gain other than healthy pregnancy weight. You might not know this but fat itself when it accumulates enough begins to function like an organ all on its own and secretes its own hormones which perhaps not surprisingly make it harder to lose it. Similarly the longer you maintain a healthy weight, your body adapts to that and it will be easier to maintain.
• Concentrate on building and maintaining core body strength. The best eating plan I have found yet is The Abs Diet because it is something that you don't have to stop doing after a few weeks and it really works. I am convinced that I have naturally followed it most of my life without realizing it. Having a solid and strong core is a huge advantage during pregnancy as one of the most common problems women have is when the Rectus abdominis muscles split down the middle usually during pregnancy causing weakness and difficulty to do  many ab exercises and making the stomach appear less shapely than it would otherwise. My youngest child Clara had this type of hernia temporarily because she was born prematurely. Strong and healthy abs will protect you and aid recovery from many back problems (not all of course *Disclaimer*) and might even help with bladder control and improving your sex life. Both Yoga and Pilates have a wide variety of difficulty levels and focus very much on strong core body strength. I highly recommend them because they can be done with children, before during and after pregnancy and can be found in easy on up in difficulty levels. I prefer to exercise at home and use a DVD that has 5 workouts on it and Netflix through the Wii for my TV so I can access new workouts all the time. You can engage your abdominal muscles anytime you want though whether you are sitting in a chair or walking. I do this all day long. Just tighten your abs for a couple seconds and then release. When you bend over or lean you can do it too. Its like doing mini crunches all the time and you don't need any special equipment. 
• We don't really do snacks at our house. That's not so say that we are never allowed to eat snack foods exactly but we do not buy very much of what most people consider snack foods very often at all. Crackers and dry cereal are things we do have but often are whole grain, low sugar and are not given all the time to the kids. We hardly ever buy sweet snacks like fruit snacks, granola bars, cookies, pudding cups, etc. Instead we have the large bottom drawer in the refrigerator is full of Activia yogurt or other yogurt that does not have high fructose corn syrup or lots of dye. We try to buy fruits like bananas, grapes, and apples regularly. Instead of thinking of a snack I try to do more of a mini meal. Instead of plain crackers we will have some crackers with cheese like string cheese, American cheese or slices of other cheese and maybe a half a banana, carrot sticks, or apple slices. It seems that toddlers do better with one mini meal like this at around 11 or 12 then a nap and then another light meal which might be leftover pasta than one bigger lunch and if they had a snack at 10 they probably wouldn't be hungry yet by 11. 
• Don't buy it if you don't want or need to eat it. To be honest we have had the benefit of having a severely limited income. Because we don't have a lot of money for groceries I have had to be very careful about what  spend our food dollars on. This means that if it doesn't have nutritional value its not going to be on my grocery list. I take my menu plan for the month(s) and pick 6 meals and add any ingredients we need for those to my list. We regularly have approximately 1 big dessert every week and one cooked breakfast like pancakes. Some weeks we don't have any desserts and some weeks we have a couple but it evens out.
• Choose reasonably good fats and don't restrict fat in good for you foods. We use grape seed oil instead of olive oil because it has more omegas and vitamin E than olive oil and it also has a higher smoke point so its easier to cook with and has great flavor so it works well in salads too. We also use butter for cooking and baking. Those two are the main fats I use for cooking, we also use regular vegetable or canola oil for larger amounts mainly just because of the cost and the only margarine we buy is Bremmel and brown spread for toast. I believe that butter is good for us and it adds a lot of flavor to food too. We eat lots of dairylow in fat a glass of whole milk is. Calories do count but if its a healthy food it can be a big part of your calories and women and children really need the calcium and vitamin D.
• Protein is a super important part of your diet and a big part of what fills you up. Make sure you are not just eating lots of carbohydrates and forgetting about protein. I actually start to dream about meat if I forget and eat a lot of salads and vegetarian type meals, specifically the scene in the matrix where Cypher eats the steak.We eat lots of fairly lean meat and I am also quite frugal when it comes to meat too. I don't only buy the leanest cuts but I do use a lower ratio of meat in things like stew, stir fry, or soup. We are a family of 5 but I usually use about 3 chicken breasts for most chicken meals and just add more veggies to make up for it. 
• I let myself have things that I really like and don't guilt trip myself over them. When I am eating something that is extra great or special I try to enjoy it to the max. Don't wolf it down, really savor your food and enjoy the experience. If you really enjoy something, like sweets do not demonize it and cut it totally out of your life. It should make sense that if you try to deprive yourself of one of the things that you really enjoy it will make you depressed, not motivate you more, and when it comes to dieting it will probably cause you to binge and feel guilty. Guilt is not a good motivator. If you think you need to cut back on sweets, cut back on what you are buying and plan some healthier desserts into your life. They should be things that actually sound good too and then plan in some of the desserts that you think you need to be careful about eating. This might sound counter intuitive but we need things to look forward to. So one big no holds barred dessert per month and 3 lighter but still yummy desserts is better in the long run than telling yourself you can't have sweets at all and eating 4 gallons of ice cream in a week out of self loathing. Rewarding yourself with reasonable and enjoyable things is good for you.

I think that's all I can scrounge up for now. I hope it wasn't too wordy or preachy sounding. I spent a lot of time trying to think of what I really think and do. Health is so important to me and I want to be an encouraging voice to people out there. Making healthier choices doesn't have to be a chore or a prison. We can all make positive changes no matter how good or bad our situation. Life is about constantly reevaluating where we're at and where we want to be and trying things to see if it helps. Sometimes it does and sometimes it needs to be tweaked. Also some things work for some people and totally do not work for others. Just because this stuff works for me doesn't mean that it has to be something you do. 

Body image issues

Okay ladies pretty much ALL of us have some kind of issue with ourselves. I was talking to my sister today about it and there seems to be this secret code that doesn't help any either. Women have this thing, we almost never say something that is ALL positive about ourselves. We might mention something we like about ourselves or a new item or something and then feel compelled to knock some other body part, or issue down to make it seem like we are "real". We also teasingly tear each other apart in guise of friendly banter. I'm not talking about best friends chatting, I'm talking about groups of women who are acquainted with each other somewhat. If one person looks nice one of the most common "compliments" is often "oh I hate you because you look so great and now I feel frumpy/ugly/fat/gross etc"

The thing is that all of us deserve to feel good about something and ripping on each other doesn't really help anyone.  Most of us have heard the line that you don't know what battles someone else is fighting so be nice or something like that and its so true. When you run into someone who looks super cute and feel a little insecure you might not know that she was up all night with a screaming baby or some other mind numbing problem and as her own form of therapy put on the cutest outfit she could scrounge up and put on some makeup and did her hear and went to Walmart for a stroll to keep herself from driving off a bridge.

Years ago I ran into some quote or book or something or other that encouraged me to enjoy things that are special and not to put that off for only "special" occasions. Today is special and if we don't reward ourselves in little ways and build some self love into our lives we kind of forget how I think. Don't wait for next year or tomorrow. Who cares if you think you need to lose 10 lbs find something that makes you feel pretty and wear it today. Surround yourself with reminders that you are loved. This is especially important if you don't have a lot of people telling you those things or are often very stressed out. You need comfort and beauty and peace in your life and some of it comes from choosing consciously to cultivate them as parts of your life.

The funny thing is that even though we think everyone can see our flaws, many of them don't stand out as much as we think. That and if anything we highlight them by either talking about them or trying to cover them up in ways that actually draw attention to them. Its amazing to hear people talk because the ones you think really are lovely are often the ones who are struggling the most to accept themselves.

I am working really hard an a next post about how I managed to maintain and regain my weight through having kids. I've had a lot of negative and some positive interactions with people about it and truly thought that maybe I was just lucky and worried that I was appearing conceited or something when people asked me how I did it. It took a lengthy conversation for me to realize that in some ways I maybe am lucky in that area but its not all dumb luck. I have worked very hard at creating an atmosphere where I consistently win in that area. Like any skill or goal I have had to rethink and tweak my lifestyle as I go through different experiences. There is no magic about it we build on success and practice makes perfect. If we concentrate on building ourselves and others up we will improve and see improvement in others too. There will always be struggles and hurdles and setbacks too and as long as we keep working we will continue to figure out things and learn new things along the way.

Climb ON sisters and friends!!!

Menu planning tips and ideas

Meal planning has always been hard since I got married. Its pretty challenging just to figure out how to incorporate both people's likes and dislikes and have some variety and then after kids come along it obviously gets harder. I tried lots and lots of ideas and finally realized that the hardest part was just like cleaning that lots of supposedly helpful advice amounts to not help. Such as instructions that say "write down everything you eat and then cycle through those meals and maybe periodically add a new recipe" duh that's what you do when you don't have a menu. And how do you figure out how often to introduce a new recipe?

Then I discovered that woman's day publishes a month of menus both in their magazine and online. And its free to view and print it online. So I print it off and then cross out anything we would not like to try or eat that they put on there and then substitute with either tried and true recipes or new ones using any keywords from that recipe if I can even if its as simple as pasta or chicken or an cuisine like Mexican or Italian.

From there I have also modified the idea further. I wanted to make breakfasts that have to be cooked periodically and realized that its hard to remember when we last had something or how to plan something into our week and also desserts so I also put in 1 breakfast recipe and 1 dessert recipe per week. Then I put these recipes in page protectors in a 3 ring binder and store the big menu sheet in the front pocket.

We don't stick to this menu too strictly in case you are thinking that sometimes you go out to eat or don't feel like something. If a recipe sits at the front for a long time and I keep skipping it sometimes I either throw it away or just put it in the pile of recipes we've made since it doesn't seem to be something we want to eat. I usually pick from about 3 recipes that we have the ingredients for that evening in any order they appear. We are a little behind now too so I feel free to make one of the recipes for lunch and another for dinner if we want. And if we make one and don't like it we just throw it away. I have added so many recipes now that I keep the ones that are not in the current menu stored in an expandable file for later use. Also anytime someone mentions something that sounds good, I look for a recipe for it so that I have it on hand to add to the menu.

I also found a list of lunch ideas online that I printed off and taped inside one of my cabinets for days when I can't think of anything to make for lunch. And they work well for rushed dinners too. Thinking of a lunch or simple dinner used to paralyzingly difficult for me. I'd stand in the fridge and stare at the contents then shuffle over to the cupboard and stare at that for a while and on until we finally just had cold cereal or something. It also makes it easier for me to make up my grocery lists because I can pick a couple of the lunch ideas and figure out any ingredients we need and then I usually go with 6 dinner meals figuring that we won't eat 7 meals in a week or even 6 really. We eat a lot of leftovers so if I get 6 meals worth of food or even less we figure it out. That and often I can find meals past that which we already have the ingredients for  if I can't make it to the store for some reason.
Hope this helped you, its sure helped me :)

Vacuum Shopping

I am preparing to purchase my second vacuum as a married woman. That would only make it my third ever too. So I've been thinking that perhaps I'm not the only one who is not always sure how to decide what is the best. Generally I google it and look at some of the websites that sell the most options usually Amazon and Walmart. I look at what are the best sellers and what are the top rated. I sort based on the price range and few features that I know I want. And then....it gets tricky. I also usually check Consumersearch for what they recommend too and sometimes other ratings sites.

The problem is even after all that there was a pretty big list left and I wasn't sure how to narrow it further. I always worry about price, should I go for the cheapest thing that has my desired features or will that one be junkier than the next up model. I read review after review and wonder if the bad reviews are people who didn't assemble theirs properly or were not using them correctly or what conditions they were using it in.

And so I was obsessively reading reviews on Walmart's website when I noticed something. At the bottom of the page there is a place that people can ask questions about products like "does this work for hard floors?" or "will it pick up sand or cat litter?" . These were things I was wondering myself. And then I noticed something else, the answers mostly tend to be as mixed as the reviews themselves except that sometimes a spokesperson for the product company answers the questions. Sometimes they say something like "no it doesn't do that and its not really designed for it anyways see models x,y, and z. "

So then I went to the company pages (Bissell, Hoover, and Eureka) and looked at which models are recommended for my situation (hard floors, pets, some rugs, and allergy sufferer) That helped me narrow it down to 1 or 2 from each company and then price range (100 or less) helped me narrow that down further.

I will say that the last vacuum I had was a Bissell power force turbo, one of the most popular ones at Walmart and pretty inexpensive. I think they run at about $63 right now there. So the main drawback to that one was the dirt cup empties from the top so you have to dump it out which gets messy, the filter configuration clogs fairly easily like if you are vacuuming a lot of hair or fuzzies, and the exhaust blows out the front in such a way that it will blow dust or finer dirt out of the way before you can vacuum it up and it also will scatter sand and kitty litter instead of vacuuming it up so it takes a long time to get it all if you ever do. That and its now not functioning.

Ultimately I felt like I was not a very big fan of my last vacuum and did not want to buy a Bissell because of that. So that left Hoover and Eureka. I finally decided that Eureka didn't have anything in my price range, with the features I really wanted so that finally had it down to one brand. And from there I picked the one that I want. Now the only decision I have is whether to upgrade it for the automatic cord rewind option or to just go with the less expensive one that has all the most important features. I am leaning towards the cheaper one. Here's a link to the vacuum that I have finally chosen which is supposed to be good for pets, hard floors and rugs or carpet.  

Planting seeds

This week I planted some seeds as recommended by the Farmer's Almanac. Last spring was warmer and I don't really remember when I started my seeds and then killed off quite a few of the seedlings once the weather was generally quite warm by putting them out and then they got frosted. We still ended up doing quite well despite that but I have resolved to follow the Farmer's Almanac this year and see if I can improve our garden further.

So the seeds I planted were Broccoli, Cauliflower, Bell Peppers, Tomatoes, Oregano, Basil, Marjoram, Cilantro, Thyme, and Hollyhocks and Oriental and California Poppies. I am so excited, some of the Broccoli and Cauliflower have already sprouted.

I've been walking around looking at my gardening spaces a lot lately trying to imagine what I need to change, how it might be different and think of things to do now before the growing season really starts. When we first moved in we made an arch out of saplings and staked it above the steps on our stone wall. It was very nice to see but we get quite a bit of wind here at the top of this little hill and it blew down in the fall. I've decided that for now its better off without that for the time being and now need to move my climbing rose so I am going to put it down next the steps.

Recently Helpful

So... welcome to my new blog! I've been thinking lately about all the cool things that I most recently find useful and thought you might be interested.

Yogurt - Once we hit the sloggy dog days of winter we sometimes experience the sluggishness of system that is advertized in "activia" ads. Ironically I happen to think that for whatever reason Activia is one of the best tasting yogurts so I have started buying it frequently and trying to eat at least one of those cups of it every day sometimes more. I happen to have 2 toddlers though and as small as one of those yogurt cups are they seem to get dumped on the couch pretty often. Then I happened to find Dananino and didn't even notice til we got homebut it comes in little tiny cups that are much easier for a toddler to hold and more likely to get eaten instead of dumped.

Netflix - Seriously I know its been around for a while but we JUST got it and I LOOOOOOVE it. We happen to have a Wii so we hooked the internet to our Wii and downloaded the netflix app and now we can watch all kinds of movies and tv shows on our tv. It is so nice and probably saves us some amount of money over all the late fees from the movie rental store. Handy to have this in winter like when the roads are really bad and you do not want to leave at all but do want to watch lots of movies.

Womans Day Month of Menus - Ok so I randomly ran across this one time. I got a pile of magazines from a neighbor last summer and was flipping through them when I noticed that Woman's Day publishes a whole month menu. I was desperately trying to figure out how to do menu planning for my family at the time and was working on my idea at the time which was make a list of meals the family likes and just stick to those with the occasional new recipe for variety's sake. So after a month or two that got a bit old and I wasn's sure how to know when I was making something too much or how to vary side dishes or how to know how often to add a new meal and when I did how do I figure out what to add if I don't happen to be craving anything in particular. So eventually I noticed that this month of menus is published online and can be viewed or printed off at no charge. So what I do is I print it off and then look it over. Any meals that I do not want to even try to make I just alter. If there is any part of it that I can use I do so for instance "eggplant pasta" we don't like eggplant so I would look for a pasta recipe that we haven't tried. If we try something and don't like it, I just throw that one away. I have also started adding 1 breakfast recipe and 1 dessert per week. I keep the month plans in a pocket of a three ring binder and then print off the actual recipes and put them in clear plastic page protectors. Then as I go through I take them out. I have gotten enough recipes now that I keep ones that are not actively on the menu in a pocket expandable file folder until its time to bring out the menu again. I make meals in any order we like so its basically just a list of ideas which is so much nicer than a blank slate or a sheet of paper with a couple ideas on it. It makes creating a grocery list so much simpler too.

Castle - Thats a tv show and one of my top favorites at this moment. Its a crime drama somewhat similar to Law and Order and CSI. The main difference is this show has a more lighthearted tone. One of the main characters is a writer of crime drama fiction books and teams up with a homicide detective to get inspiration for his work. They do a pretty good job of adding comic relief with it so its not all scary but there is enough suspense to keep me interested.

Light pink and Beige - There seems to be quite a bit of these two colors in the fashion world  recently and I am finding out how useful they can be as wardrobe staples. My two favorites right now are a loose fitting tee in light pink and a pair of pumps in beige.