Eating Healthy in a Tough Economy!

    

 Tis the season for looking at New Year’s Resolutions and making positive lifestyle changes for your family.  Reflecting on the past list of New Year Resolutions, when you create one behavior change that you are committed to, this is when real success happens. In preparation for this article, online data suggests that more often than not, resolutions relate to being more fit and eating healthier.  Although great ideas, achieving the goals of being fit and eating healthy can set one up for failure.  Eating and physical fitness are achieved by repetitious behavior change.  One of the key factors is to have everyone on board in your household.  Instead of such a broad goal, look at changing one aspect of this for each item.  The recommendation for exercise is to workout 30 minutes most days of the week for adults and 1 hour most days of the week for children. Begin with a goal of achieving a 30 minute workout every other day and build on this habit.   In relation to eating healthy, try embracing the concept of cooking as an art and a joy as opposed to a daily cumbersome task.

     Exercise is an activity that when embraced gives you more energy to get through your day.  This is definitely a change that needs to be embraced by everyone in your family.  Children tend to be active so if parents will join them, this helps everyone.  There are three components necessary for physical activity.  Basic stretching, anaerobic which involves increasing your heart rate and weight bearing exercise which can be such things as push-ups.  Physical activity does not require you to spend vast amounts of money on fancy equipment or memberships to health spas.  It is a matter of deciding on a time, a place and the activity.  Our family finds that the best exercise is that done right here at home.  We have a stationary bike for those days like today that the Nebraska cold prevents one from taking a walk.   We discovered that our cable network has Fit TV so we select programs that we like and record them to workout with at a convenient time for us.  We find that the easier the plan is the more apt we are to follow through.  

     The art of cooking, when you make the decision to cook, you reduce your fat, sugar and salt intake.  All of these are a recipe for improving one’s health.  In most cases, cooking from scratch is not much more time consuming than using products from a box and the best news is that you decide what to put in the dish.  I watched “The Chew” today and they made their own vinaigrette dressing.  The ingredients were fresh; they used less oil by blending the mix in an in-expensive food processor and reduced the fat, sugar and salt added to the dressing.  Not only is it healthy but saves you money at the grocery store as well. Consider a garden, a kitchen herb garden is a great place to begin to help you reduce your fat, sugar and salt intake by adding the flavor of herbs. 

Rosemary

Oregano

 

Parsley

The first step is to decide what it is you wish to change and then be sure it is something you want to change.  Fitness goals can be S.M.A.R.T goals while choosing to cook accompanies eating healthier.  I find personally that the easier I make the goal, the more it becomes reality and easy to obtain.  So, my first goal....I love French Onion Soup so I am going to have this for New Year's Eve!  More to come on this adventure!  As far as fitness goals, I will continue to play nicely with my stationary bike Burt, I may even keep my eye out for a replacement for Burt.  He is beginning to groan and a few of his spokes have broken.  So, perhaps it is time to find a new workout mate.  Also, I plan to work hard on a stress free lifestyle.  This will involve learning to say no to some things and feeling ok about it.  To you and yours, may you have a very prosperous 2013!