No Average Mom

One of my most recent dietary objectives has been to get my family to eat more fruits and vegetables. I know this is something that most parents struggle with when it comes to feeding their children. My younger son eats pretty much nothing that isn’t beige. He seems to be in a streak where the only things he wants are peanut butter, wheat bread, and cheerios. You would think that asking him to eat some fruit was a matter of life or death. The way the child carried on about trying some apple wedges was crazy. I am sure the neighbors thought somebody had better be shopping for online life insurance soon given all the screaming that was going on. The child screamed at the top of his lungs and sobbed at the sight of a new food on his plate. I finally gave up trying to force the issue and removed the apples from his plate. My mindset is that these things happen in their own time and it will all turn out alright. I don’t remember anyone making me eat certain foods I am turned out okay. I am sure he will as well.

I have been trying to find a good way to track the calories in homemade meals. This has been a process of trial and error. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, the app LoseIt! Is the most valuable tool. I liked SparkPeople for awhile until I discovered this app.
It is fantastic, and has been the number one app in the Health category for over a year now. And it’s free. But if you don’t have either of those, SparkPeople is pretty good.

Whenever I cook things from scratch I just manually add in everything that the recipe asked for. Don’t know if it will end up being the same, but I usually cook with few ingredients so it comes out similar enough. Another thing you can do is Google the recipe you are using like “Calories Mashed Potatoes” or something to that affect. I realize that was a bad example, sorry. I know there is another website you can search for the calorie content of various foods but I don’t recall it. I’m sure it would be easy to find in a search engine as well.

If you want to find low fat versions of recipes, Hungry-Girl.com has some good ones, and that way you will know that what you are making is below 300 calories per serving.

The nice thing about calorie counting is that you can modify it however it works for you, and there are so many great tools available to keep track of them.

Do you have someone in your life who you feel tries to undermine the positive things you do? We all have these people in our lives to some degree. For me that person is my mother. I love my mother but she has never wanted to see me succeed with a weight loss diet. Even when I was an overweight teenager she would do or say things to make me want to give up on becoming a thinner person. This I believe stems from her own inability to diet or loose weight. What makes me sad is that this behavior continues into my adulthood. For example she knows that I am not eating any sugar or starch and have lost 25 pounds as a result. In response to this she decides to invite me over for dinner and bake all of my favorite foods including cream puffs, chocolate chips cookies, and scalloped potatoes. Any other time I would love that she actually cooked foods for me but this time I couldn’t see past the underlying meaning. Fortunately, something in me has changed and I explained that I had brought a salad with me to have instead of the starchy side dishes and that I would be having some of the sugar free desert I had also brought along. It was a moment I am actually quite proud of because it showed how far I have come in changing my eating habits.

Do you go to bed at the same time as your spouse? I am a morning person and my DH is a night person. I remember being shocked when we first got married that he didn’t want to go to bed with me at 10pm! I’m so over that now! I fall asleep at the drop of a hat and he has to wind down, watch something on tv in our room (doesn’t keep me up at all) or try to read. He usually nods off around 12:30 or 1am. There are times when we go through cycles where I will stay up later, he will stay up later, or we go to bed together. Currently I’m the one going to bed several hours before he does. When we do go to bed at the same time it seems like it is the only time we can be together and carry on a conversation without being interrupted every 30 seconds.

Our youngest son seem to constantly have one thing or another going on with his skin. We have tried everything we can think of to keep his skin clear but it always seems to break out again. I have scoured the internet for information and think I have seen every ad that says click here for eczema information on the web. The bumps are on his arms and legs and they don’t seem to bother him but I wished they would go away. I use a gentle soap and keep him moisturized but the issues with his skin persist. The doctor treated him with prescription medicine but it didn’t make much of a difference. I hate to put him through allergy testing but that may be where we are heading in the future.

Do you have a “theme” in your kitchen? I’ve seen a lot of apple, stars, grapes, and watermelon themes. My kitchen has a vintage theme (like Grandma’s kitchen). The color scheme is dark red, brown, and cream. I went to Home Depot and bought a sheet of panel board that looks like bead board,and put that halfway up the kitchen and dining area walls, and used decorative trim to make a chair rail (very cheap to do). I used canisters that have old time writing on them (ex. flour, sugar, coffee, tea), antique kitchen utensils,and wicker baskets to decorate above my cupboards. Old 1/2 gallon canning jars (from the ’20’s and ’30’s) are used for storing bulk items. I have a vintage 1/2 pint wide mouth jelly jar holding my scrubbies and bottle brush sitting by the sink. An old #2 pickle crock holds my cooking utensils. I used decorative tea towels from the craft store as cafe curtains with a berry sway for a valance. I got most of my stuff from a discount decorating store, thrift stores, and my DH grandma’s storage shed. I see vintage kitchen items at auctions all the time, and most go cheap! My next purchase is going to be some old half aprons. I want to tie the aprons strings together, and hang them on the wall over my basement stairs (it looks fabulous in my head!).

Just about every day I have a protein shake for either lunch or dinner. You would think that after two months my children would start to realize that I am making a protein shake. For some reason the minute I start the blender they come running. I know that they have hope that what I am making is not a nutritional mix of my weight loss supplement and ice but instead a milkshake for them. I always feel bad because I know they think that what I am drinking looks like a milkshake and therefore must taste like one. I offer them a sip each time I make one but for some reason they won’t take me up on the offer. I know that if they just tried my protein shakes they would realize that I am not having some secret dessert that I am keeping from them.

One of my friends is having problems with her daughter talking negatively about herself. She wanted to know how I dealt with this or if I had encountered it in my own child. I explained that we counteractit like this: for every negative thing they said, they had to say 3 positive things. We started a gratitude journal as part of the tuck in routine. We also didn’t allow the negativity to go on. I’d try to determine if there was a real problem- if there was, help them solve it or just deal with it. If not, I’d ask “How is your attitude helping you feel better or making you feel worse?” We can always change our attitude. If they begged for constant reassurance, I’d start asking them to tell me things they liked about themselves. If they had specific fears or concerns, we’d read books that addresses those issues and try to come up with ways to deal with the issue.