Just because we’re cooking dinner at home doesn’t mean it’s healthy.  And just because we drive through McDonald’s doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy.  Just because we send lunch to school for our kids doesn’t mean they’re eating it.  And just because we don’t buy candy doesn’t mean they aren’t getting it somewhere.  Our best laid plans don’t always work out the way we planned!

And don’t I know it!  My first big food shock with my kids was making a nice lunch for them, placing it beautifully on a table with matching placemat and dishes and little kid silverware and then watching them not eat it.  It was lunchtime for me, but they weren’t hungry!  So I thought I’d let that lunch sit until they were hungry.  It rarely worked, they had minds of their own and they wanted to pick their own delicacies to eat.

So is the woe of trying to handle somebody else’s eating habits, even at that young age.  How could I possibly have thought I could handle somebody else’s healthy food selections when I can hardly handle my own.

And that may be the key, fix our own first.

I know moms who’ve had to make major diet changes for their children’s health and they took total charge and did it well and then taught their child to do it too.  I think about those moms and think, wow that is a lot of work!  Is our main problem as moms (trying to feed our children) that it’s too much work?

Too much work to work out calorie counts.  Too much work to work out ingredients and inventorying them.  Too much work to set a dinner time and have everybody get there at once.

Really all of these things have been very difficult for me, starting with my husband’s work schedule.  He’s a little bit more regular now on the time he arrives home in the evening, but for years I never knew if he would be called into a last minute meeting, have a late change of plans and have to rework his whole day late into the evening.  For me to meal plan was outrageous.  I know because I gallantly tried it a few times.  I’d plan a week of meals and end up discarding meat that had rotted in the fridge waiting to be cooked.  It was easier to add up who was home and buy directly for them.  In the early days when the house was full of babies and toddlers, they didn’t eat much anyway.  We ate light.

As the kids got old enough to enroll in activities, it just so happened that they were all always scheduled at night.  All the kids, all the activities, all the nights and everyone coming and going at all times, when could I have dinner hot & ready for all?  Pretty impossible.  My best bet was always the crockpot, but that involved planning as much as a day ahead.  Sounds easy, but it’s not.  When I could manage that, that worked out the best.

But just because I’m cooking dinner at home instead of doing what’s easy and driving through somewhere, doesn’t mean really that it’s one bit healthier.  It also doesn’t mean it’s cheaper.  If I can buy a dozen tacos at Taco Bell for $10 and feed my family, that’s something that I couldn’t achieve buying the ingredients in the store and taking an hour to make them myself at home.

And what’s this whole organic thing we’re all so buzzed about?  It used to be that everything was organic.  Now it’s only organic if it’s raised on a family farm somewhere.  But how do I know when I’m in the store if the lettuce in my hand is really organic or just marked up in price?  How do I know the loader guy put the organic products in the right slot?  That’s a lot of trusting going on!

The best information I’ve ever gotten on dieting was to eat things with the fewest ingredients, so an apple is great, applesauce gets a little more dicey, apple pie a la mode with whipped cream and sprinkles gets even more suspect.

I also believe that what you eat the most is what you crave the most.  When I’m eating m&m’s, chips and brownies, those are the things I crave.  If I eat dessert on a regular basis, I expect and need dessert on a regular basis.  If I start eating salads every day for lunch, pretty soon that’s what I look for at lunchtime, a salad.  I don’t know if that’s more inherent to my nature or if everybody is a bit like that.  We tend to find the things we like though and go back again & again for them.

I picked up dinner last night from Chick fil A.  I know, I know, that was the easy route, but since I’ve taken that route many times before, I didn’t even need to ask what everyone wanted.  We all crave what we usually order when we go there.  I came home with 3 chicken sandwiches, no pickles, 2 spicy chicken sandwiches, no pickles, 1 chicken salad sandwich, and a large chicken soup.  So is my family like me because I’ve taught them this, or again, is it human nature to crave what we’re used to?

My husband and I have been on countless diets and countless forays into healthier eating and I’ve gotta say those took total attention and took over our lifestyle.  It was so much work, we quickly gave in.  My husband has tried this more often than I and I find it easier to focus on his health than both of ours.  Mine is just too much to worry about.  On top of it, the kids are not interested in fish and salad every night.  They have gotten to the point where they will eat a lot of different things, but the things they like best are the least healthy.

That’s when healthy becomes a bad word and a turn off…more expensive, yukky tasting and non-filling.

But we just found out about something that so far has been working for us!  It’s a system of shakes that you can drink and substitute for any number of meals, the more meals you substitute for the better the outcome.  But these shakes are chock full of the vitamins we need for energy and optimal health.  In less than 2 weeks my husband lost 21 pounds.  It’s coming off far slower for me, but I’ve been eating badly for a long time and being an aging female the fact that I’m losing anything at all is amazing.  So here’s the link for the product we are using.  If you’re looking for healthy and fit try the 90dayaz challenge with us.  And let’s compare notes in 3 months.  Here’s to looking good and feeling great all summer long!

Now instead of buying frappucino’s and routing around for chocolate, the shakes substitute beautifully.  I feel satisfied.  I get what I want.

And when it comes to the kids, they’re older now.  They have their own cravings and attitudes about eating.  No matter what I have in the house to eat, it’s not good enough.  If I have fruits and veggies and breads to snack on, they want cookies and brownies and yogurt.  If I have the reverse items in the house, they are looking for the fruit and veggies.  They are teenagers and even when it comes to food, everything I do is wrong.

I’m feeling a sense of relief that they can find their own food and be responsible for their own health.  I may not have given them a brilliant start to health, but who knows.  They may see where I went wrong and right the ship.  Or if I had been good and faithful and healthy all along and then set them free only to discover m&m’s, all my direction could be caught up in the wind.  They are their own people.  They will learn and discover themselves, compare it to what we did and learned and discover, hopefully, what works best for them.  We have them for a short time, they suffer from our shortcomings, but all too soon the decision is there’s.  We learn from the good and the bad, what we like and what we don’t like.  We will always be our own persons.

There is a good quote out there that speaks to when we are young we risk our health to create our wealth.  Then when we are old, we spend our wealth to regain our health.  Maybe we can work on both of those together.  Take a look at this 90dayaz challenge.

These are the decisions we make.

Helpful Links:

http://women.webmd.com/guide/nutrition-101-how-to-eat-healthy

http://www.helpguide.org/life/healthy_eating_diet.htm

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/tips-for-healthy-eating/MY01695

http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

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