Tica: Exercise makes me feel good

I kind of think Lisa has been peeking in my windows.  The day she gave us our personalized diets I had pulled ground veal out of the freezer to make salisbury steaks for dinner.  I also checked to see if I had enough bow ties for the garlic butter noodles my kids love to mix with the broccoli I was making.  After our morning routine at the gym on Friday she went over our menus and saved mine for last.  No red meat, no pasta, no bread…  I started looking around for one of the other Ticas at the gym.

We’re not big red meat eaters really but spaghetti is my go-to meal.  My “what-am-I-going-to-make-in-twenty-minutes-that-all-of-the-kids-will-actually-eat” meal. And I also thought having to go to Flab to Fab would give me more reason to frequent the Bread Store more often.  We probably eat it with every meal, every day.  Now, neither my kids nor my husband signed up for this.  I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to have the energy to explain everyday for the next eleven weeks why my four year old cant have his PB&J or my husband, who is half Italian, cant have pasta.  Having children (and a husband) has taught me to pick my battles.  Mommy leaving the house to workout, yes.  Spending a little more money on healthier foods for all of us, definitely.  Twenty uninterrupted minutes to take a hot shower in a locked bathroom after these workouts, with every fiber of my being. Not buying the kids’ favorite breakfast food (English muffins, bagels, and waffles) or my husband’s snacks is not one I have to win…just yet anyway.  So I spent my Sunday cleaning, portioning, and cooking the chicken breast that will make up most of my meals for the week.  It was a pain but it is making eating properly less difficult.  More importantly it has made NOT eating the wrong things less difficult as well.  This is my most difficult part of this challenge.

Its hard to be sedentary with kids so the exercise portion of the challenge is the easiest promise for me to keep. Not finishing my kids’ plates and not eating cereal have been the most difficult. Exercise makes me feel good; it gives me a sense of accomplishment that I carry with me throughout the day. And as silly as it sounds, not having ice cream and cake and cookies and hamburgers and hot dogs when everyone else is, really made me feel left out. But in learning how to deal with such silliness, I have recognized that the things that are in regular rotation at our table are setting my kids up to deal with the same stuff that is holding me down. I cannot allow that to happen. That realization has brought me to this–Lisa can look all up in and through my house. She can even bring Shanna–who is awesome Her plan has not only drastically changed how I will eat but how I think about feeding my family because I intend on keeping them Fabulous. This is my ultimate goal.