New Year, New Feature

             I have a confession to make. I made some New Year’s resolutions this year. I don't usually. I believe that if something needs to be changed in your life, change it. Don’t wait for a special day on the calendar. This year, the need to make a change has been building for months.

I won’t go over the laundry list of clues that my body has given me that it's time for a change. I will tell you that my chiropractic bills could fund a pretty nice vacation and my bathroom scale hasn’t been so cruel since I was sporting maternity clothes. It’s time to start treating myself better.

I’m not focusing on counting  every calorie or working out like a maniac. In the cold heart of winter that would be setting myself up for failure. I’m simply eating better and moving more. I’m walking to the bus stop and doing yoga when I can fit it in to my schedule. I’m planning my meals instead of suddenly realizing at 4:30 that we’re all hungry and there is nothing easy to throw together in the house. That’s a recipe for a trip to Little Caesar's or Wendy’s with a Zantac chaser.

This past weekend I was filling my grocery cart with food and reflecting on our first week of healthy eating. It had gone really well. While I haven’t lost much weight, I was feeling better than I had in months and my family enjoyed my meal choices. Another huge bonus: I was saving money.

There is a perception that eating well is expensive. It doesn’t have to be. I had the unique good fortune growing up learning lots of tricks for eating well without spending a lot of money. My mother was the department head of a large inner city Home Economics department. She has years of experience feeding people on the cheap and teaching people to eat well. She and I will be teaming up to bring you a  new feature on this blog, “Thrifty, Tasty Tuesdays: Feeding your Family for Less.” Each week we’ll bring you tools to help your family stay healthy on a budget. Sometimes it will be a recipe, other times it will be general tips go easy on your wallet and your waistline. I'll use ingredients that are widely available and I won't use any fancy equipment. Also, every recipe will have to pass the scrutiny of a couple of veggie-fearing, fried food-loving, sugar-craving judges:

Fast food? Us?

            So watch this space next Tuesday for our first installment of Thrifty, Tasty Tuesday. Start the new year with a healthy diet and a healthy bank account!

Tough Mama

            Monday I took my fourth trip to Children’s Hospital in Boston with my son James. It was time to take his cast off. He had surgery three weeks ago to repair some damage he did to his hand a few years ago. We’ve had a few challenging moments with his right hand in a cast but he has adapted remarkably well. He has learned to use his left hand to eat, write, and of course play video games. I can’t imagine an adult coping this well without his or her dominant hand for this long. He rarely complained about pain or itchiness and managed to do almost everything he would normally do. The biggest challenge was trying to keep him from going full-speed and damaging himself again. Or damaging someone else—that cast made a pretty effective weapon.

            I love Children’s Hospital. Fear and sadness could so easily take over a hospital for children—there are so many kids with really serious conditions. But every kid is treated like a regular kid. No one stares at the little girl who has obviously lost her hair to chemo. No one makes a fuss over the boy with visible scars on his face. Everything is normal there. Maybe the definition of normal becomes much broader when you’re dealing with sick kids.

When adults at Children’s engaged James in a conversation they would ask him about his age, his grade, whether he liked Sponge Bob or if he liked sports. Everywhere else we go people ask him about his cast. The closest anyone at Children’s came was when they asked if blue was his favorite color—since his cast, his shirt, and his stuffed monkey are all blue. I’m not faulting folks for asking. They’re curious and concerned about seeing a little boy in a cast and James doesn’t seem to mind. But I would imagine that someone whose child had some visible long-term condition would get really tired of explaining it to strangers.

            Yesterday afternoon I was helping James do exercises the occupational therapist prescribed for him. It’s painful and slow. But if he wants to regain full motion in his finger it has to be done. He catches his breath as he bends each joint and holds it down for ten seconds. He gets a little teary eyed. “Don’t hold your breath Buddy,” I tell him, remembering the things I know from years of yoga. “Take a deep breath when we bend your finger.” We move through the three joints twice. “Do you want to just do two more and take a break?” I ask him.

“How many do we have to do?”

            “Ten.”

            “No. Let’s just do it.”

            It hurts but he keeps going. He knows there are times he can play me with his sad eyes and pouty lips. This time he knows I can’t let him stop. Giving him a break is all I can offer. Without the exercises his finger won’t be any better than it was before the surgery. James knows I can’t give in. He gets it and he’s willing to work through the discomfort to get better. I am so impressed with his determination.

            A part of me wants to let him stop. That part of me that nursed him countless times at 3am, the part that crawls into his bed when he has a bad dream, the part that has read Good-night Moon hundreds of times, the part that has sung “Sweet Baby James” thousands of times. That part of me wants to tell him it’s okay to stop and make him a cup of hot chocolate instead. The Tough Mama inside me has to tell that part of me to go sit in a corner while I do my job. The tough Mama (or Papa) is the part of our parenting brain that makes our kids get vaccinated, eat his vegetables and take nasty tasting medicine. It is the same part that makes him do his homework when he’s had a tough day or takes away privileges when he’s done something wrong. I hate being Tough Mama. But I know I have to be her sometimes.

            James hurt his fingers six years ago. Just his fingers. They’re going to get better but it’s going to take some work. When I helped him with his therapy I was thinking about all the parents of patients at Children’s Hospital—the parents whose kids are dealing with problems much larger than a couple of fingers. The Tough Mama part of them must be huge. I don’t know how they do it. I know the short answer is, “What choice do I have?”  But still, you do it. You tell the sweet-nurturing part of yourself to go find something else to do while you do what you have to do to make your baby well. I tip my hat to you Tough Mamas and Papas out there. You have my eternal respect and nightly prayers.

Eat, Drink and be Merry… for Tomorrow we Diet

            I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. If you want to change something in your life, just do it. Why wait for some special date on the calendar. Besides, most resolutions involve giving up some form of comfort—food, nicotine, sitting around on your butt. Who wants to do that during the darkest, coldest time of the year? One of my favorite bloggers (who happens to be my niece) once wrote, “I think January is a terrible time to resolve anything. January is cold. January is long. January is when you lie in bed and eat pie.” The only resolution I ever really enjoyed keeping was one I made before my children were born. I decided to stop buying boring underwear. That was a fun resolution—but I didn’t even keep that one for long. A few months later I was wearing maternity underwear.

This year, however, my physician has told me that I need to drop fifteen pounds. Normally, if given medical advice, I follow it immediately. It’s one thing when your favorite jeans are snug.  It’s another thing altogether when your weight raises your physician’s eyebrows. My dad had his first angioplasty when he was in his mid-fifties and his father never saw sixty-five. I take heart health very seriously. Since Dr. M’s orders came mid-way between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I went home and started making fudge instead of starting a diet. I don’t diet at Christmas. I enjoy myself. I eat prime rib and apple pie on Christmas Day and my Aunt Diane’s meatballs and my uncle Brad’s chicken cutlets on Christmas Eve and my husband’s rugelach whenever no one is looking. I wash it all down with red wine or bourbon. I. Love. Christmas.

            Now even the beef and barley soup made from the bones of the Christmas roast are gone. It’s time to follow doctor’s orders. Exercise won’t be a problem. I love putting in time at the gym. I love getting sweaty and really earning a long hot shower. I really like being able to do more push ups than some of the big scary looking muscle heads at the Y. Sadly, I can’t out-push-up the muscle heads these days. For a variety of excuses reasons I haven’t been my exercise fanatic self for the past few months. In addition to not being quite so svelte, I’m also not as strong as I was a year ago and that bothers me more than anything. I’m also not as fast. I ran a 5K on Thanksgiving and added eight minutes to my time since my last 5K two years ago. Eight minutes—plenty of people can run a mile in that time (not me of course—maybe if I were being chased by a gun-toting bear I could run that fast for a whole mile).

            My challenge is going to be food. You know how some people say their weakness is sugar or chips or fried foods. My weakness is… food. All of it. I can’t stand the idea of giving up a particular food group like carbs or fat. If I give myself too many rules, I’m going to break them. I think I’ve found my best bet. The editors of Prevention magazine have come up with a book called The 400 Calorie Fix. The idea is pretty simple. You get to eat four, 400-calorie meals a day or three 400-calorie meals plus two snacks that equal 400 calories. 1,600 calories a day is a long way from deprivation and still a big enough cut from the way I’ve been eating. Mixing that with a renewed commitment to working out should get me started. I’ll let you know how it goes. But I promise not to be one of those people who talk about nothing besides their diet. But I’ll tell you this, the minute I can do more push-ups than the guys at the gym, I’m telling everyone.