A Healthier Family We Will Be!

I try to be a healthy person and provide a healthy lifestyle for my family. I've homemade the baby food for my 3 kids, breastfed them as babies for the 1st year, and then served them organic milk for the years beyond. I cook at home nearly every night, fast food is a very rare thing, usually only reserved for meals during car trips. I shop at the Farmer's Market for a lot of our fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts. We have eaten several times from our garden the past few months. I was a swimmer in high school, swimming twice a day for 3 years, and even ran a marathon a few months before I got pregnant with my 1st child.

But still, in recent days I've come to believe the healthiness around our household needs to be kicked up a notch or two. My husband and I need to get on a regular exercise routine (Not 30 Days on, 30 Days off!) and we as a family need to eat less processed food.

I'm not worrying about us losing weight, just eating things that are better for us. For example, I made homemade ice cream in my ice cream maker last Sunday and I felt good about us eating it. Was it high in fat and calories? Yes, but the ingredients were all so basic -- milk, an egg, cocoa powder, cream, sugar, & vanilla -- and I mixed it up in my own home with my children helping. That is not the kind of food I'm working to eliminate, but the more unwholesome things.

Here are 7 things that are helping me think healthier:

1.

I was already pondering these things, and then Robynn started her 30 Day Throw Down on making healthy changes one month at a time and it got me thinking even more!

2.

This article on exercise beating surgery for some heart patients is really eye-opening!

3.

This list of superfoods has given me a lot of ideas of foods I should incorporate more into our diet.

4.

In that superfoods list you'll see that plain yogurt is a superfood, and while I eat yogurt everyday, I have realized I've been buying the wrong kind. The Yoplait Strawberry is very high in sugar, 32 grams in one cup, and considering 40 grams is the recommended amount of sugar for a 2,000 calorie diet, that is a lot! So, this week I bought plain, organic yogurt and then used this recipe from MckMama and it is so yummy I'm never going back to the store-bought strawberry yogurt! For some reason, when I blended it all the consistency was pretty thin, so I just drink it through a straw like a smoothie, rather than eating it with a spoon, but it seems more like a treat than health-food like that anyway! I know it has sugar from the added fruit and honey, but again, that is wholesome, from nature sugar, rather than added at a factory!

5.

Also on the list is lentils and because I bought a big bag at the farmer's market a few months ago, I found this recipe to use them and I love it, could eat it several times each week! I have decreased the chicken broth amount a bit and made it less soup-like and more side dish-like.

6.

I have also fallen in love with hummus and chickpeas in general. This recipe is a bit different than regular hummus, but it is really good and so easy to make! No cooking at all, just measuring, mixing, and mashing!

7.

Cooking from scratch sometimes takes a little more time, but I am enjoying simpler grocery trips and fewer things to clutter up the pantry/fridge without all the cake mixes, canned rolls, rice mixes, boxed mac n' cheese, Pop Tarts, and snack packs around! It is a finer thing to go to the store and only have things like wheat flour, sugar, plain yogurt, bananas, blueberries, milk, eggs, broccoli, red peppers, and olive oil on the list!

Anyone else hooked on a healthier lifestyle?

Find more Finer Things Friday at The Finer Things in Life, Hooked on Fridays at Hooked on Houses, 7 Quick Takes Friday at Conversion Diary.