Kate:
We decided to do a larger update on Sundays about how we are feeling about our eating and other relevant things.
My goal with starting this blog with my mom was to have a way of holding myself accountable for what goes into my mouth and really, how I'm taking care of myself. It's been less than a week and there are several things that I've noticed about my eating.
1.) I eat without thinking.
2.) I eat all day (graze).
3.) If I'm preparing food for my kids, I always have some.
4.) If I'm out and about I feel compelled to stop and get at least a coffee, if not a whole meal.
5.) I use food as a reward, not just for myself but for my kids.
I have absolutely changed 90% of those habits by just knowing I have to take a picture of what I eat. I don't want to have to take a picture of a handful of goldfish crackers, a string of string cheese, 1 bite of pancake, an extra bite of faux sausage, a bite of a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich that one of my kids didn't finish or a spoon I've licked clean after making the aforementioned sandwich.
I wanted this to be an honest account of what my diet looks like...and it is (to the bite!). But my diet has changed dramatically since I started this blog. I want to be honest with the fact that more often than not my diet didn't have any fruits/veggies in a day. I rarely drink water (still dont). In an average day I'd eat some sort of potato product (I refuse to count a processed potato product as a veggie). Frozen tater tots, fries, whatever. Sometimes I'd eat six frozen waffles or a Pyrex serving bowl full of cereal.
I am just done with being gross. Feeling gross, looking gross, doing gross things (like eating five servings of something). I was just using food as something to do, a way not to have to deal with anything else.
I feel great about the progress I've made because while its drastic compared to where I was it isn't completely health-nutty and I'm not setting myself up to fail like so many times before. If I were eating rice crackers and egg whites, I'd probably already have failed by now. I'm doing what I can, when I can and being conscious of the things I would like to change.
Some of the things I'm paying attention to, but not necessarily changing yet are as follows:
- Phase out sugar-free things from my diet.
- Stop drinking soda, which goes along with the fake sugar thing. I won't drink sugary soda, so soda will be eliminated totally.
- Drink at least 6 glasses of water a day.
- Buy more local food.
- Be more conscious of how much I spend on food.
- Find holes in my diet, whether it be protein, certain vitamins, whatever.
- Exercise whenever I can.
In closing, I do feel good about the fact that I forced myself to go for a walk on Friday when my dad was in town, even though its such a hassle. With a 3 year old, 20 month old and 7 week old its extremely hard to get motivated to get them all dressed, in the car, get the double stroller in the car, have the diaper bag packed, all of them fed and content and THEN still want to walk (while one or all of them are cranky). But, I was aware of the problem (too little exercise), found a way to make the problem better (have my dad help on Fridays, the one day a week he's in town) and then I DID IT. So, just recognizing the problem can lead to action. If I can only walk once a week, that's all I can do. That's okay. I will find other ways to correct the problem in addition to walking.
Until next week,
Kate
Here's a picture of my boys on our walk yesterday. It was all downhill from there.
