Pizza Dough!

I decided that tomorrow night we are going to build our own pizzas for dinner. I figure the kids will have a BLAST picking what to put on their pizzas and it is all from scratch (except the cheese, I haven't learned to make that on my own yet).

So I got my dough book out and made an olive oil bread dough that will be rolled out flat and made into pizza by the kids tomorrow night!

Lentil Shep Pie

Mmmm Breakfast

We went to my inlaws house yesterday and my mother in law found a waffle iron she had from awhile ago but never used, so she passed it on to me. I decided I wanted waffles this morning so I made them up using a wheat batter recipe I found online. Then I topped mine (the kids got plain and loved them) with cut up strawberries and a bit of cabot whipped cream.

Imagine my surprise, upon putting the info into myfitnesspal, to find that my whole breakfast only had 10 grams of sugar in it! This is compared to a 1/4 cup of maple syrup which has 53 grams of sugar in it (not counting the little bit in the waffle itself).

Meanwhile I am finding that I PREFER the taste of the way I topped it today! YUM!

Being Healthy

I am 26 years old. That is about half the age of my biological father when he died. I never really knew him so it didn't "bother" me that much but his cause of death really does bother me. In his mid 50's he died of a heart attack. He had several heart attacks (from my understanding) before that final one and it is really a wake up call for me.

Now I am "thin", I have the correct BMI for my height, etc, however I *know* I am not healthy. I don't eat enough veggies, I don't eat enough fruit, and I was eating FAR too much sugar.

Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and a myriad of other ailments run in my family. These are bad things folks, things I don't want to have to worry about as I age. With the genetic background I have, being healthy is even more important.

So, 3 weeks ago I decided to start exercising. I wasn't interesting in losing weight, I knew I likely wouldn't given that I am at a "healthy" weight already for my height. I also know that muscle weighs more than fat so if I toned up I actually expected to GAIN weight.

Admittedly I don't do a LOT of exercise. I do a 20-30 minute DVD a day along with the normal chasing after children/housework that a stay at home mom does. I have a yoga DVD with 6 20 minute works outs, I have 30 Day Shred with 3 20 minute work outs, I have No More Trouble Zones with a 40/50 minute work out on it (you can pick and chose any of the 6 minute circuits), and I have a 6 Week 6 Pack that has 2 30 minute work outs. However, even just 20 minutes a day, 70 days a week is 140 minutes of exercise a week...that is over 2 hours that I wasn't getting before. These are all also pretty intense exercise with cardio and strength training all in one. It is a big step for my health, for sure.

The other REALLY big step I took 3 weeks ago was cutting out as much sugar from my diet as I could. It was pretty difficult at first. I had been eating 100 to 150 grams of "added" sugar a day (candy, cookies, brownies, etc). This wasn't from fruit or juice, it was from the "bad" stuff. Since then I have cut down to 30-50 grams of added sugar a day. It is a pretty big jump for someone that LOVED candy as much as I did.

You see that? "Did". The oddest thing for me since cutting out the baked goods and the candy has been the total lack of desire for these things. Now, don't get me wrong, those first days were HARD, really hard. I walked down the aisle with the Easter candy and it was extremely difficult to keep my hands off the mini eggs and the peanut butter eggs, but I did it.

I do have the occasional chocolate chips (semi-sweet) and I even got Nantucket Dark Chocolate cookies from the store and have one a day if I want them (only 9 grams of sugar per cookie). However I don't even find myself WANTING these anymore. I made brownies today because I love to bake and it seemed like a fun activity. They are still sitting there on the stove completely untouched. I have NO desire to eat them. Zero. I am hungry, I want food at the moment, but I find myself thinking about cheese or an apple or maybe a bagel thin with peanutbutter...but NOT the brownies on the stove.

I am working on slowly adding in more fruits and veggies but I admit that veggies are a new thing to me so finding ones that I like and figuring out what to do with them has been hit or miss. I know I like corn, peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes and even lettuce. Beyond that it is a challenge for me. I am hoping though, that with persistence, I can change my tastes to be fond of these things. I already know that taste buds can change, I have proven that with the decrease in sugar, I just hope that they keep working towards liking green beans and carrots.

All the while, I am trying to set a decent example for my children in activity, trying to be healthy, food, and not "dieting".

Sugar

I have decided that sugar is about the most evil thing that exists.

I have always consumed a lot of sugar, for as far back as I can remember. After I had kids this became a problem for some reason or another. I am guessing it relates to hormones because they seem to be responsible for a lot of not so great things.

When I eat too much sugar I suffer from yeast trouble. NO not just *down there*. I get trouble from it with bad skin, I get cranky, I get fatigued, and the most annoying trouble of all is it makes my IBS flare (assuming that my IBS isn't simply sugar/yeast related).

So, after yet another bought with these issues, I have decided to do my best to cut out the sugar. Sugar is in EVERYTHING. Even yogurt, which is generally seen as healthy, has 20+ grams of sugar per serving. Obviously the plain doesn't but the grab n go flavored ones do.

It means little to no juice etc as well.

The biggest problem I have? Chocolate. I LOVE chocolate.

The most difficult thing I have done in quite awhile, was done about 30 mins ago. I had to go to the store to grab a couple of quick things and I was craving sugar like crazy. Of course, I had to walk by all the Easter candy, which includes one of my favorite candy's, cadbury mini-eggs. I love them.

It was almost as though there was some sort of gravity pulling me toward the candy. I managed to steer away from it, but it was extremely difficult.

The other problem is now I am in the withdrawal phase of getting rid of sugar. I have headaches and bad IBS flares. I am super tired. This is "normal" as the yeast dies and release toxins all at once. Since I am not giving them sugar, they are dying because there is nothing to eat. It lasts a few days and I am hoping to be out of the worst of it by tomorrow, but today the headache is pounding and I KNOW that some chocolate, that I want so badly, would make it ALL go away.

As a way to keep myself accountable I am writing down everything I eat. I am not writing down amounts or any of that, but I am writing down WHAT it is that I put in my mouth. It looks like I eat a lot, and it is possible that I do, but I am a grazer and grab a handful of something here and have half a thing there etc.

This was yesterdays list.

Double Post Day!

I had two things I wanted to post about today. I thought about saving one for tomorrow but what is the fun in that?

The first photo I have is of our little dinosaur project. For Christmas the kids got a little dino in an egg. You place it in the water and let it sit there for awhile and eventually the dinosaur grows so big he "hatches" out of his egg. The kids have been begging off and on since Christmas to see what dino we got, so I placed him in the water yesterday. This afternoon this is how he looks.



The kids are quite pleased by him and think he is pretty cool. They were going up every 5 minutes at first waiting to see him and I had to explain, several times, that it takes the dinosaur a little while to grow big first so they had to be patient.

The second thing I wanted to post about today is the great cupboard clean out project.

Normally I go shopping for food every week or so. I had a list all made out for this week and decided, at the last minute that I wasn't going to go. I decided this for two reasons. The first reason I decided this is because I am sure I MUST have enough things in the cupboards to make it through another weeks worth of dinner. I have beans and lentils and all sorts of odds and ends that need to be used up. The second reason is because of my battle on sugar, which I will get into another day when my resolve is a little stronger, but suffice to say if I had gone shopping Sunday as planned I would have left with copious amounts of chocolate which goes against my battle on sugar.

So dinner tonight is a variation on the lentil soup recipe I found here. I didn't have carrots or celery so I opted to use 2 potatoes and used a can of corn to go in there as well. In the end it doesn't get much easier than a crockpot soup and I really enjoy lentils so I figured I would give it a go.

This is a picture of what it looked like when I first put it going this morning. It looks much thicker now as the lentils have plumped up nicely.

Another Look at Lunch

Here is another look at our lunches. Most of the time I throw together bits and pieces of whatever is around.

Today's lunch is:

Yogurt
String cheese
Some leftover fruit that we had with dinner last night
Cinnamon muffin (small homemade kind, not big store kind)
Celery sticks
Glob of PB for celery sticks

Again, maybe not the "best" I could do if I tried harder but they enjoy these foods and all the food groups are represented so we go with it. I think we might have pizza for tomorrows lunch, oh the horrors!

Project 365 Day 5 + C25K End of Week One

What you see here is my least favorite part of everyday.



Seems harmless enough right? Bananas, spring cheese, odwalla bar, and a pile of veggies. However, figuring out what we are all going to eat everyday drives me insane. I am not by nature a creative person and I totally lost my love of food while pregnant with my son. I had to eat constantly when I was pregnant with him or my sugar would drop and I felt horrible, I got so tired of what to eat next.

However, I know food and nutrition is important so I do my best to make it as round a meal as possible, as evidenced here in today's lunch for the kids, all the food groups are represented. I long for the day when it doesn't seem like such a chore to pick out meals for the week (then do the shopping required so that we can eat them). Maybe someday.

And now, for the end of week one of C25K.

I was sick last night and into this morning. It sucked, hard. However I was able to get an hour and a half nap in this afternoon and I was able to eat dinner. I also knew that if I didn't do day 3 (the last day) of week one I was likely to slack off. So I knew I had to at least TRY to do today's, I could always try again tomorrow if I couldn't do it.

Well, I am proud to say that Friday will bring week two as I was able to complete today's.

It is interesting because I don't really think of three days a week being much for exercise but I could feel in today's session, that even with being sick and not quite up to par, I was just about ready to run for a little bit longer at a time.

The only real issue I have with it so far is that I am running on a treadmill because I am a pansy and running outside in New England winter is not my thing. Now ordinarily this wouldn't be a big deal, but I get the WORST vertigo when I run on the treadmill, well not while one it, but when its time to go back to walking like a normal person.

I did a little googleing and found out it is normal and affects the same part of of the ear that causes motion sickness, and considering how motion sick I get, I am not surprised. It calms down pretty quickly once I am off the treadmill, I just need to make sure to hold the railing while going up the stairs out of the basement.

So onward and upward I go.