Food, health and other fun topics

My son has been sick for a long time - like most of the last two months. I think he was well for maybe 2 weeks. First he got a cold and that led to a horrible ear infection and two rounds of antibiotics and now he had another cold which also led to a round of antibiotics. This week, Charlotte finally caught on to the trend and got sick. She has RSV. Crazy. I think we have finally turned the corner - Thomas is getting back to his old self and Charlotte is not having any trouble breathing.

The other big health topic in our life right now is working out and eating right. When I was pregnant, we got lazy with the eating and exercising. We knew that we would have to turn things around once Charlotte was born. We started the eating right thing in December, but I started exercising again last week. I have to be honest - I have a real love/hate relationship with exercise. I get up in the morning and grumble my way over to my workout and moan my way through it. BUT, after it is over, I'm ready for more. Like, I'm ready to move more and I feel better (sore, but better). It makes me really mad. I'd much rather lose weight by sitting on the couch and knitting, but it turns out that knitting only burns 2 calories/hour.

For working out, I am relying on several Wii programs. First, I use EA Sports Active for my morning workout. I am doing the 30 day challenge. I like it because it let me choose the intensity of workout I wanted (Medium) and the kind of music I want in the background. Afterward, for fun, we use the Wii Fit Plus. I like to play the games :) If Josh is around, we sometimes play Wii tennis. We plan on going to the park and playing real tennis when it gets a little warmer and less rainy.

And, as far as eating right, we are trying several things. I plan meals in advance - usually for the week. We eat lots of whole grains (especially for breakfast), I have several cookbooks that I like (Healthy in a Hurry and The Healthy Slow Cooker) and of course I rely on the internet for recipes.

Here is an example of a couple of things that we have made and liked:

Last night, we ate Pork Tenderloin with green beans and Sweet Potato and Chickpea Puree. Thomas ate all of it (as you can see from the pictures above). He loved it so much he rubbed some of it in his hair and decorated the table with it. Josh and I though the Pork was a little dry, but it was really good as leftovers for lunch today.

Tonight, we had Pot Roast and Salad. For the pot roast, I used the recipe on the back of the Lipton's Onion Soup box, but used red potatoes instead of white. It was REALLY good. I could eat pot roast every day. But, that is part of the deal - moderation on the pot roast.

For breakfast these days, I'm enjoying steel cut oats (also known as Irish Oatmeal). We eat ours with a tablespoon of peanut butter and a banana. I would never have thought of putting peanut butter in oatmeal, but it is delicious and the whole bowl is only 350 calories.

At book club tomorrow night, we will be discussing Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. A lot of our eating lately has been influenced both by this book, the next book he wrote, In Defense of Food and the movie Food, Inc. I don't ever want to be one of those people who goes around telling other people how to eat or what to eat. I respect that people have to make their own decisions about food (and a lot of other things in their lives). These books and movie made me think and one of the things they reminded me (again) is that I am grateful that we can make healthy food choices. The most heartbreaking part of Food, Inc was the part where they profiled a family with a limited budget trying to choose between eating fruit and vegetables and eating off the dollar menu at (fill in the fast food place).

The healthy choice for me now is to go to sleep since both of my babies are sleeping :)