Healthy

So I've been trying to make me and my husband healthy while at the same time saving money. My solutions?? Well my biggest solution was brought to me by a local author of the cookbook "Dinner on Ice." I've read through her cookbook and all her suggestions and now know what stuff freezes well and what stuff doesn't. My goal is to make huge bulk meals and freeze the leftovers to be pulled out and cooked at my desired time. Since sometimes I find that I don't get around to making dinner, which then causes us to go out and eat, I have decided that this will be the perfect solution. Dinners will already be halfway made and the only thing I have to think about is small preparation but mostly just heating it up. Good idea? For us I really think it is. The author claims it saves about 200-300 bucks a month since you aren't always shopping and you'll eat out less and you waste less food. I've already made a huge vat of chili. It served me, Mark and Audree for one dinner and then I divided it up into two 4 serving dinners and 3 single serving lunches. All you have to do is defrost and heat it in the microwave and it is ready to eat. Plus it lasts for 3-6 months. I'm pretty excited about this, and so is Mark. I really love to cook, and I love to make delicious tasting meals, but honestly sometimes I just don't want to put in the effort every single day. Also if we start eating out less that also equals being healthier. I also try very hard to not cook terribly fattening or high caloric meals.

Mark's work has tried really hard to keep them healthy so they don't have to pay for top notch insurance(the idea is if they are healthier they wont need to see the doc as much). Anyways because of this they have a lady come in every so often to weigh them and check their body fat and stuff and tell them what they should be doing exercise wise and what they should be eating. The lady keeps telling Mark that he is not eating enough calories in the day and because of this he can't lose weight(the scientific explanation makes sense if my simple explanation doesn't). So with having single serving meals prepared Mark will be able to just grab one and go...where before he'd forget to prepare a lunch all the time and he'd either go without, or go grab something not healthy or come home and eat whatever we had around(which he can't do anymore with the distance we now live from his work). So this is another way I feel like doing this will help us be healthier...at least Mark.

My biggest struggle is my cravings. I seem to only be able to eat stuff that I crave. And it seems that it is never what we have. Well instead of leaving stuff in the fridge and have it possibly going to waste because I don't want it I hope that by freezing it I will want it at some other point and instead of going to the store to grab something else or going out to eat I'll be able to grab something from the variety of stuff we'll have saved in the freezer. I'm also trying harder to discipline myself into eating what we have. Sometimes it's really hard cuz I honestly think I'll throw up if I eat anything but what I want. But I am really going to try and exercise a lot more self control and persuade myself to want the stuff that we have.

So all in all this "dinner on ice" will hopefully cater to all my shortcomings and help us save money and be healthier. I've known my shortcomings for a long time(I'm referring mostly just to cooking) and instead of trying to work with them I've used them as an excuse. With the possibility of having to pay for 2 mortgages for the next who knows how long(God willing not too long) it is really important for us to save money...and it is very important to me not to compromise my health just to save money. Also I have 14 weeks of pregnancy left with a goal of only gaining 10 more lbs tops...which definitely wont happen unless I eat healthy. But gaining anymore then 14 lbs in the next 14 weeks I know will be very hard for me so I really want to try and avoid that.

And I know this post is getting long and most of you probably don't care but I am going to continue on with the rest of my ideas for being healthy. Feel free to stop reading. If anything this will just be for "logging" purposes. So another reason we are sometimes not healthy is because healthy stuff can just be dang inconvenient sometimes. So I've decided to make it more convenient for us. This morning I separated our dried fruits into little ziploc bags so they are ready to just grab and go and will serve as a snack or a portion of a meal. So when Mark grabs his lunch he can also grab a bag of dried fruits and go...no preparation on his part at all. Which suits him well seeing as he wakes up like 20 minutes before he needs to leave for work. And suits me well since I am more likely to grab what is available immediately for consuming. I will also be doing the same with veggies and frozen fruits. I will be separating baby carrots and broccoli into serving sizes, possibly salads too, and have them ready to grab and go. Once again for Mark and for me seeing as the broccoli will already be cut up...I love broccoli but generally don't eat it because of all the washing and cutting and stuff that goes into it. My old roommate Christine used to eat frozen berries with milk over them. Thanks to her example :) I will also be separating frozen berries into serving sizes where I can just dump the right amount into a cup and pour milk over it and eat. Sounds like a lot of baggies I know, but we buy them in bulk at Costco and that isn't so expensive. We may get to the point where we reuse the baggies...I dunno.

But these are my goals. They may seem silly to some of you but to me I am pretty convinced it will help us be better. Help me be better. I always want to be the wife that cooks for my husband every single night but I don't and when I don't I feel like a terrible wife and I take a few blows to my self esteem. I'm confident that this will be a great solution for that. Also having the mother in-law that I do I often run into information overload on health stuff and I become so overwhelmed that I just revolt and stop eating healthy because I get overwhelmed with it all. Also I'm going to stop listening to everything my mother in-law says and just start simply with what a normal person would do to be healthy...not a nutrition nut. That may come in the future but as for now it's not something I can financially or mentally handle. There are some things I've taken away from her though that I do really appreciate. Kefir for example. It is infinitely more healthy for you then yogurt. The yogurt in America is disgusting and packed with high fructose corn syrup. After having kefir I seriously cannot handle yogurt anymore. Plus kefir is full of probiotics and prebiotics. Everytime I regularly eat kefir I feel so much better. Unfortunately kefir can really only be found at Good Earth around here...which isn't the cheapest of stores, but in the interest of saving money kefir is the only thing we religiously buy from the whole food stores.

And just to continue logging my goal is to only have 1 thing of sweets a day. And by sweets I don't mean food with sugars in it, I mean 1 cookie, or 1 candy bar, or 1 slice of pie, or 1 serving of ice cream etc. This will be a big improvement of what I've been doing ever since the holidays. Thanks to the holidays my body feels like it needs to have sweets all day long. I've done good for the past few days and hopefully I can keep showing as much self control.

Oh and another thing I've decided to do is always have hard boiled eggs in the fridge. For a long time people have said to stay away from eggs because of cholesterol and stuff. But the truth is is that eggs are good for you. Yes even the yolk is good for you. Having an egg everyday is actually ok and people who don't eat an egg everyday haven't shown any significant improvements in their cholesterol. Plus eggs have good cholesterol. Your body needs cholesterol. Not to mention when you eat an egg you are less likely to snack on a million other things(which may also add to your cholesterol) because eggs have protein(animal protein) which make you full and for a lot of people help you to lose weight. So having the eggs in the fridge and all you need to do is crack it open makes things pretty easy and convenient.

And so far this is the extent of what I have come up with. I'm sure most of you don't care so much but I will probably be posting every once in a while about how things are going with this. It will be good for me to see it written down and hopefully motivation for me to do good. Until the next health post, wish me luck :)