To New Beginnings

I have had a great week last week. I have been tracking my food intake on LoseIt.com and I have been doing well with it. Hubby was the one who found the website and brought it to my attention. It has been nice because you can get reminders sent to your phone reminding you to go and log your food.  It also allows you to track your exercises and changes the amount of calories as you burn off your food. It has been a nice tool to keep me and hubby on track this past week.

My other down fall in the past has been meal planning, maybe planning in general. This morning, I sat down and planned out all our meals for the week paying closer attention to the fresh produce in my refrigerator that I need to use up before it spoils. This week I plan on trying out a few healthier meals from various sources. Tonight we had Salsa Chicken, adapted from SparkPeople.com. Instead of Jar salsa, I had made fresh salsa last week that I needed to use up and the dinner was superb! the meal came in at 157 calories, 24.5 protein, and 3.3 grams of fat. Pair that with whole grain brown rice and some fresh guacamole and we had a very healthy meal that even my kids ate. I am making dinner for tomorrow night as I type this. It is lasagna courtesy of Jamie Oliver from his Jamie’s Food Revolution Cookbook. His foods are simple, healthy, and made with fresh ingredients and can save you money. I can tell you, I am impressed by the taste of the food just from the Bolognese sauce I made for the lasagna. Kind wish I had a scratch ‘n sniff capability for all of you.

At dinner tonight, I decided to engage the boys in a “game”. We played “what’s healthier”? (At the age of 5, both of my boys are pretty picky eaters. I can get them to eat 1 bite of a vegetable each meal, if I’m lucky. They will eat fruit like it is going out of style and the only meat they like is chicken. Don’t ask them to eat an egg, noodles, rice, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, green beans, or anything else green. I have to be very creative with meals.) Back to my story, we went through many of the products on our table tonight as well as some fast food options available, and asked the boys what they thought was healthier. They did well, better than I thought they would. After we discussed what was the healthy option we explained why it was healthier and why we need it. It lead us to an entire preschool wellness lesson.

I was excited to see Earth Footwear ask the Blogging Carnival Question this week about, “What does wellness mean to you?”I am a huge advocate of wellness. Wellness can be defined many different ways and mean something different to many people. To me, wellness encompasses positive mind, body, and soul. It is our physical health that we can guide with healthy nutrition, regular exercise, and sleep. It is feeding our desire for knowledge to fuel our passions and intellect. It is our happiness that helps guide our mental health. There is financial wellness that comes by being smart with our income, environmental wellness by being eco-friendly, spiritual wellness by looking within or looking to a higher power, social wellness by being with our friends and positive supportive peers, occupational wellness for those lucky enough to find a satisfying career, and medical wellness for preventing disease and promoting well being. Each piece is as important as the last. Combined it is who we are.

For those looking for motivation in the wellness department, please join us Monday night on Mamavation TV where we are joined by the wonderful Pete Cohen! Each time I hear Pete speak I always learn something new. He’s funny, he’s witty, and he’s not bad to look at. I always get a refreshed out look on where I want to be with my health and how I am going to get there.

I am looking forward to writing a few more posts in the upcoming days. I am in the works of putting together a giveaway. This week may not be the week due to me preparing for my review at work on Thursday and an interview on Friday. But I promise it will be BIG!! Have a great week everyone!

Another Monday

I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me, Monday came way too fast. Last week was jammed with running errands, kids activities, my garage sale, working extra shifts, the list could go on and on. Eight months ago I would have said the hell with working out, going to the gym, popping in a workout DVD. Not anymore. Even with the busiest of days/weeks/months I am still determined to make the healthier choices. I WIll get my body to move in a way that is beneficial to my health. I WILL make healthier food choices for me and my family. Did I accomplish this last week…I did still get to the gym 3 days last week. I did not go on Monday or Wednesday due to some heavy landscaping of my front yard. Guess who did the landscaping? Yep, me and my trusty shovel. My boys helped too when it came to spreading out the mulch. It was my makeshift Strength training workout. My food choices could have been a little better but even when eating out we made decisions to eat healthy off the menu.

With all of that, my highlight for the week was convincing my family to take a Family Yoga class with me at our YMCA. We had so much fun. At first I thought there was no way my boys, very active almost 5 year olds, were going to be able to stay focused long enough or quiet long enough. The beauty of the class, they didn’t have to stay quiet. We pretended to e erupting volcanos as a warm up. We became a family of interconnecting trees while doing our tree poses. We were nice cats and mean cats while doing cat stretch, down dogs and up dogs were also included with sound effects. At the end we got to make our own family animal pose for people to guess. We even had a small relaxation session at the end, where we played a “game” to see who could fool the “teacher” into thinking that they were asleep while we “dreamt of our favorite activities to do as a family”. At the end of class the teacher had out yogurt for our healthy snack. I am hoping the Y does another Family Yoga night again soon. My husband and I cannot wait to take the boys again. I have caught them doing yoga poses around the house now to. It is so cute to see them stretch and learn how much fun it is to be active.

This week I am going to continue with my workouts. But I am going to focus more on nutrition. A suitable goal since our Mamavation TV Guest this week is the wonderful Pete Cohen. He is a Life Coach, Health and Fitness Professional with so much personal wisdom that he delvers in a down to earth way. His new adventure is a nutrition program that is individualize to each participant. How cool is that! He goes in depth with vitamins, minerals, nutrients, herbal teas, essential oils, and foods to give you energy and to help you be healthy and as fit as possible. To find out more visit http://www.petecohennutrition.com/ Join us LIVE on Mamavation TV to hear more from Pete himself tonight 9pm CST.

Congrats to our SOTW Joanna of  @way2gomom! She is a fabulous Sista and is there to give motivation a nd support when it is needed most!