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.