Saturday, April 30, 2011

I QUIT!!

     I quit!! I've decided I'm no longer on a diet. I've never been one to stick to any specific diet anyway, so eating healthier is my new lifestyle. I must admit that, I do have lapses in judgement when it comes to food or food-like stuff. I usually find out that I don't really care for the same sweet treats I was addicted to just months ago and I'm enjoying healthier options more and more.  I do however, still have a thing for chocolate... I've had way too much Easter candy this past week. Which also explains why I've not lost any weight this past week. (sigh)

   I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I never really enjoyed cooking, until recently. I actually felt inadequate in that department. After all, being a wife and mother, that is the one thing I should do best, right?  Now, I'm looking for the next great recipe and I get so excited when my family enjoys the meals I prepare for them. Brandon even has his coworkers thinking that I'm some fantastic cook. He's been enjoying more veggies and less meat these days and has agreed to only eat meat 2-3 times a week. That means I must find more recipes for fruits, veggies, and healthy grains that are filling enough that he won't try to eat a deep dish pizza from Savastano's again. (That was a painful experience for him.)  I'm also determined to show him that we can eat healthy, organic meals on a reasonable budget.

    I love to read diet and nutrition books. I have so many on my shelves and I tend to pick the best information from each one. Last week I began reading The Maker's Diet by Jordan Rubin. First, I must say his story is nothing short of a miracle.  His book is very informative and includes a listing of many different companies that offer natural and organic products for your health, body, and your home. I haven't finished it yet, so I'm not to the point where he introduces his diet guidelines. I did skim ahead though, and it looks similar to the South Beach Diet with the different phases and the lists of foods to enjoy and avoid. I also purchased Reshaping It All by Candace Cameron Bure, which isn't really a diet book. I haven't begun reading her book yet, but I'm eager to get started, so I'm trying to finish the one I'm currently working on whenever I have a "free moment".(HA!! I crack me up!)

     The past few days we have been at the OCHEC (Oklahoma Christian Home Educators Consociation) convention in Tulsa. This is our third year attending and every year there is one lady that I'm very interested in going to her workshops, Karen Hopkins of Growing Healthy Homes. For the past few years she's been planting the seeds of healthier eating and living in my mind and heart.  A few years ago I was not ready to take the plunge into this new way of living and neither was Brandon. I guess I still believed that food and body care products couldn't possibly be THAT bad for you if they were FDA approved. As if the FDA had our best interest in mind. Riiight!  Last year I began paying a little more attention to what she had to say about body care products specifically.  I was really noticing a decline in my own healthy and began researching some things on my own.  This year, even before the convention, I told my husband that if nothing else, I wanted to purchase her curriculum book, Nutrition 101: Choose Life!  I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to have this in my possession. It's chock full of information on the brain and nervous system, digestive system, respiratory, olfactory, auditory and visual systems, skeletal and muscular systems, cardiovascular and immune systems, endocrine system and emotions,  all laid out in a curriculum that is easy to use with kids of all ages. It also includes many healthy recipes. This is going to be a valuable tool in my endeavors toward healthy living for my family as well as teaching all of my students proper nutrition.

3 comments:

  1. Its not your fault you didn't inherit the 'I love to cook' gene. I certainly don't have it to pass on so any of you children that do cook it doesn't come from me but rather from the desire to do so and the perseverance to attempt it. Its good that you can alter your school curriculum to have nutrition as part of it. I wish main stream schools would do more of that. Good for you on not 'dieting' any more. That doesn't work anyway. Only healthy eating will get our bodies the way it needs to be.

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  2. I never intended to just "diet" and then go back to eating how I was anyway. But I noticed that each week I would post a "diet update". I just wanted to make it more clear that this was a new lifestyle rather than a diet. =)

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  3. I think the word "diet" is a no-no word, because diets don't work! Healthy eating & making better choices is the way to go! I hear you! Veggies must be #1 in our food consumption, fruit is good also, but not too much b/c of the natural sugars. Tons of water with lemon, or lime hydrates & refreshes while filling us up. Thank you for the motivation!

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