Get Healthy: The Family Plan

I have made some healthy changes in the past year. My family, however, has not made any changes. An intention for 2010 is make family changes in diet and exercise for the following reasons: 1) to get them more healthy and 2) to support my changes and 3) to further improve my diet.

So what should we do? We had a family meeting last night to discuss.
Exercise: We each need to exercise more. We will have a family walk in the woods on the weekends, or a family bike ride in conjunction with a trip to the farmers market- Saturday one hour and Sunday one hour. As a family we will build a path together in our woods and walk that path. Allison and I can walk in the field for half an hour after school when I get her from the bus. This can be her walking the dog time which she needs to do for her allowance. Art will start biking 3 days a week in April and add going to the Sportsplex in June. We will look into a vacation at the Virginia Creeper trail with camping, much different from the time share resorts we frequent, where we watch a lot of TV.

Diet: Improve the quality food and no manger's specials. Make homemade bread and quick bread and cookies for desserts. We will have a small garden this year to grow our own healthy food. Shop more at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and Weaver Street. Saturdays make a stop at the Farmers Market, either Hillsborough, Durham or Carborro/Chapel Hill if we are at church for choir practice. We will get a portion CSA from Brinkley farms this summer.

Breakfast- Options for Allison- Hot cereal, toast, eggs, yogurt, fruit
Lunch- Allison- hot leftovers, peanut butter, cheese, hot soup each one day plus veg, fruit, starch and dessert. School lunch one day per week.
Dinner- Daily salad for everyone in a bowl with out dressing plus Main course, veg and starch. I will make more interesting salads with more variety: lettuce, cuke, carrot, celery, green pepper, onion, croutons, pomegranate, citrus, nuts, eggs, beets, olives, cheese.

Meal rotations: Seafood, pork/eggs, pasta/ Italian, Chinese, Mexican, bean soup and Chicken. No more rotisserie chicken very very limited beef in the house.

Natural meat and dairy- no hormones or antibiotics

Lifestyle: Limit screen time (computer and TV not including news or music) to 2 hours per day for each of us plus 2 movies a week preferably family movie time. We are already very green but I will stop buying new clothes, we will turn off lights when not in the room and turn off the computer at night. No more plastic grocery bags.