Day 4 - Succes for Some, Backfire for Others - Pt.1

Its Tuesday now, and boy am I paying for the last 4 days of healthy eating. It must be said that we all celebrated with big bowls of ice creams tonight, so on some realm it must be labelled a success.

For breakfast I mashed up a leftover sweet potato and mixed it into my biscuit recipe. I served my sweet potato biscuits alongside a plate of sliced apples and s weird fruit my mother in law had brough us last week: Kiwi berries. They girls loved it, the son was not impressed. He did eat almost a cups worth of apples. (I counted it).

When they got the munchies during school, I told them the only snack they could eat must contribute to their fruit and vegetable quota for the day. The next thing I know my son had eaten 16 carrots. (2 carrots shy of achieving a 1 1/2 cup serving of vegetables.) I told him to eat 2 more carrots...

... I hope he doesn't turn orange :)

My littles had gobbled down an apple each (how their little tummies fit it, I do not know, and after lunch and some random veggies I had set out, my son had eaten ALL of his veggie requirements and only needed a 1/2 cup of fruit. WHOO HOO! Victory at last!

For dinner I made a dish using left over macaroni and cheese, (My finicky eaters love it fresh but will not eat it reheated), hamburger meat, salsa, corn, cheese, and for good measure I snuck in some leftover butternut squash. (I know I am bad, that's why I had to post this on my blog and not tell my friends about this side of me!) Each child had a serving of fruit and we all celebrate the sweet victory of a healthy day of eating.

AND NOW FOR THE BACKFIRE...
I have been miserable all day! I don't know if I went a little too heavy on the cabbage last night, but I have never had such an unpleasant smelling and uncomfortable day. Do you think this is nature's way of getting back at me??? Its enough to make me want to totally ditch the healthy eating effort and go back to life as normal.

What will I do?

Day 3 - Healthy Eating

Monday - a new day and I was determined to serve enough fruits and veggies that everyone would meet the healthy eating requirements. With breakfast I served dried cranberries to my girls and 16 grapes to my son. (remember that is only 1/2 a serving of fruit!) Lunch they ate a Mother's Day Out, so I really had no control over what they ate. By lunch no one had had more than a 1/2 serving of either fruits or veggies, so I was going to have to really make up for it at dinner if we were going to meet our goal...

Dinner was the piece de la resistance: I never serve baked potatoes because 2 of my 4 hate potatoes, but in the interest of being healthy, staying out of the emergency room at odd hours of the night, and in not being labelled a neglectful mother who does not feed her children properly, I was going to lay the law down. We were having a baked potato bar! To pile on the nutrients I would add steamed broccoli and cauliflower to top the potatoes (I also left some broccoli and cauliflower raw to appease my more finicky eaters). I accented the meal with a homemade, home cut cabbage salad, mixed with carrot sticks, broccoli stem slaw, sunflower seeds, and dried cranberries. (In an act of generosity I also put some cole slaw aside before adding the dressing).

The potatoes were a hit for my nonpicky, nonconstipated eaters, by my two stomach achers were less than thrilled. Although I KNOW that a lot of nutrition got into my little jewels, my son had still not eaten enought F&V to meet our goal.

... another day, another meal...

Day 2 - Healthy Eating

Sunday was next to impossible to monitor, I told the kids to eat fruit at coffee hour during church, but of course this week it was the elderly ladies' turn to provide the food and they filled the table to overflowing with treats such as cookies, brownies and all types of sweet breads. Not a lick of fruit!

I decided to just let the requirement go, because this Sunday was particularly hectic and I was in and out all day, but it was kind of sweet to see how the kids had already jumped on the bandwagon of eating the fruit and veggie chart. They were keeping track even though I wasn't.

Day 1 - Healthy Eating

On Saturday our healthy eating journey began: I had pictures of how much food someone would have to eat to make a portion. For instance, my son is 8 and he needs to eat 1 1/2 cups of fruit and 2 cups of vegetables each day. Well it turns out, portions are a little larger than I expected... Did you know if takes 12 baby carrots to make a cup? One medium potato equals 1 cup, it takes 16 grapes to make a 1/2 cup serving, and it takes 5 brocolli florets to make a 1/2 cup serving of vegetables. Maybe my expectations have just been way too low, but I'm usually happy if I get my son to eat 2 or 3 brocolli florets. These serving ideals equal out to a lot of food. No wonder people are healthier, they have no room to eat anything else as they fill up on these mammoth portions...

I kept a little tally list on the counter. Each time a kid ate a fruit or veggie I would mark it down. By the end of the day people had only minimally met their requirements and that was only because I was stretching it. (the tomato sauce on the spaghetti pizza equalled out to a 1/2 cup serving, a 1/4 cup of mixed veggies equalled a 1/2, etc.)

I chalked it up to a good effort and we all ate dessert.

A New Leaf

I've decided I have to share this series of events even if nobody reads this because it is just too funny to leave out

Friday evening my soo the emergency room complaining of a TERRIBLE stomach ache. We called the doctor, he told him to jump around and push on his stomach to see if it was his appendix, and finally suggested we take him in to be sure. Well, after an eventful stint in ER during a full moon, my husband calls me around 4am to tell me it was just a big case of consitpation. So after being relieved he was ok, I immediately began reproaching myself for not trying a suppository first because my 3 year old had gone through the same thing a few nights before Halloween, but we didn't asually go to the ER. How could I go through the exact same experience and not get a clue????

My second embarrassement was that I was apparently not feeding my children well enough, if they were coming down with big cases of constipation. (The ER discharge was full of enough "shame on yous" to make me want to bury my head in the sand.)

With new resolve I got on the computer, looked up portions and food requirements for a well-balanced diet at each age of my children and created a new rule: NO EXTRA SNACKS OR SWEETS UNTIL EACH CHILD HAS HAD THEIR APPROPRIATE SERVINGS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES EACH DAY.