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!

Keepable Resolutions

            I felt like I spent the second half of 2011 playing “catch up” both on my blog and in my real life. I never managed to write a nostalgic look back at summer in August and I never wrote about going back to school in September. Over the past few weeks I kept finding myself saying, “I can’t believe it’s Christmas. I haven’t even gone back to school shopping”. But now that the New Year is approaching I’m beginning to feel like I’ve gotten the hang of things.

            Being behind schedule isn’t a surprise. Juggling work, children’s activities,  writing, getting dinner on the table, cajoling the kids into doing their homework, exercising, rehearsing, sleeping, and all the other little details is no small feat. But I really feel like I never caught my breath this fall. And that is my main goal for the year—to take time to breath amidst the chaos.

            I’m not a big believer in New Year’s Resolutions. The idea of going on a diet or giving up some favorite vice when the days are short and the nights are dark and cold seems like setting yourself up for failure. If my goal is to lose weight, I’d rather do it when the weather makes me want to get outside and run and the local produce is in season. I could probably stand to lose ten pounds or so, but I figure it’s insulation for the winter weather.

            But resolving to stop and breath, to enjoy my kids, to take time to play all of their new games with them, to share some quiet time with my husband, to taste the food I prepare and not just inhale it on my way to the next thing, to be present in the things I do. Those are the resolutions my soul needs me to make. And on those dark and cold January nights, they are achievable.

            My boys and I have the day off today. We’re going to see “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwreked” with their grandmother. I’m not going to lie—this wouldn’t be my choice of a movie. The charm of the chipmunks is lost on me. But my kids are thrilled to be going. So I’ll enjoy the time with my boys. I’ll bask in the warmth of their manic laughter. We’ll share popcorn and Swedish Fish. On the ride home, they’ll tell me the jokes from the movie over and over. And I’ll listen. I’ll breath in their childhood. Because each day, those boys of mine become less little and I don’t want to miss a moment.

            One more thought as we approach 2012. Thank you, dear readers for taking the time out of your own chaos to read my blog. This morning, I looked at my stats to find I just rolled over 10,000 page views. I can’t tell you how excited I am that people find my writing worthy of their time. I never anticipated “meeting” so many wonderful people on this adventure in blogging. I am truly grateful. May you make your goals, dreams and resolutions for 2012 come true.

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.