You Are What You Eat

My efforts to get myself and my family to eat healthier foods has been a huge challenge!! My husband and my kids just don’t see a huge need to try to cut out junk food and sweets. I think they all know that they really should cut out the junk—even the kids—but they just love it all so much that they just can’t stand the thought of giving it up!



The honest truth is that it’s extremely hard for me too. I don’t want to give up junk food and sweets any more than they do. And it’s even harder for me to give it up and to stop buying it when they all beg for it!


I started by encouraging them all to eat smaller portions of unhealthy foods. I had them start weighing their servings of chips or crackers or candy to make sure they weren’t eating such large portions. None of us had realized that we were waaaaay overdoing our serving sizes! We had been eating 2 or 3 servings of, for example, potato chips. When we looked at what the packaging actually calls one serving, it was a lot smaller than what we had called one serving.


Then I started allowing them to eat sweets only once a day. Without realizing it, I had let them get in a habit of eating sweets two or three times every day! It’s so easy to let bad eating habits sneak up on us! Some days I won’t let them have sweets at all, but those aren’t easy days! And the kids have learned that, if they talk about it enough and cause me to crave ice cream or chocolate or something, that I’m much more likely to give in! :P



I’m trying to get to the point where I stop and think about whether or not a particular food or dessert is worth the amount of exercise I’ll have to do to work off the calories! If it is, I’ll go ahead and eat it. If it’s not, that makes it much easier to decide not to eat it. If I do eat it, I try to allow myself to truly enjoy it and not feel guilty about it. If I’m going to eat it anyway, there’s no sense in being miserable over it!



I hope to keep at it until my family and I only eat sweets on Saturdays and Sundays and not during the week. I honestly don’t know if we’ll get there or not, but I think it’s a good goal to work toward. If I can convince my sweet hubby that we need to cut out sweets on weekdays, it’ll be much easier. If not, I’ll just do the best I can.


I’m also cooking more and trying to cut out fast food except on rare occasions. And I’m trying to cook more vegetables and to sneak some extra veggies into dishes where my kids won’t know they’re there. (For example, I put cooked, mashed carrots into my spaghetti sauce.) This is working better for me than cutting out sweets is! My family members are pretty good about eating veggies even though they’re not necessarily their favorite things to eat.


My younger daughter and I are good about eating raw fruits and veggies too, but my older daughter, son, and hubby aren’t likely to eat them raw very often. At least we’re moving (slowly) in the right direction!


What about you and your family? Any suggestions for eating healthier foods and encouraging our families to eat better? If so, I would love to hear them!