In my desperate attempt to get a handle on my food intake, I've been making weekly food goals. They haven't been going well, so I decided I need to make them a bit smaller, more manageable as it were. So, this week's goal is to simply start each day off with some kind of victory. I have found that doing this really helps me out throughout the day, whether it is as simple as measuring out my coffee creamer (as opposed to just dumping in what I think is the right amount), or conquering nemesis hill on my morning run, it helps to start the day off with some kind of win.
As a family, I have also made the executive decision that there will be no more eating dinner in front of the tv or the computer (that's right, we are THAT family, the worst kind, the kind where the parents usually have enough energy to throw something together for dinner after work rather than going through a drive through, but not enough energy to force everyone to sit down at the table and eat it together and come up with stuff to talk about). It's really healthier for everyone and I did see the fruits of my back breaking labors when the boy asked if he could have seconds of something we were eating but if he could take the seconds to the living room and watch tv, and I said no, you can certainly have more food, but you have to eat it at the table and he goes "well, in that case, I'm done". I did let him have his sugar free pudding cup on his own, so sue me.
I'm also changing the boy to bag lunch instead of school lunch. I've decided they aren't feeding him well enough at that stupid school. When he and I talked about it last, I asked him about his choices, and he was telling me that often the vegetable on offer is raw broccoli, which he won't eat (and I don't blame him one single bit, I won't eat that crap either), and that sometimes the fruit that is offered isn't any good either (like, the apples are brown and not very crispy) or other times the fruit is canned peaches, which he will eat, but those aren't too healthy! Now, the boy will eat healthy food, but it has to be, you know, GOOD. He will gladly eat broccoli when it is cooked, as well as many other cooked vegetables and he will eat almost any fresh fruit except mushy apples, which is naturally the thing that school cafeterias love to serve. The other thing is that the "main dishes" that are served are most often some kind of cheese bread with sauce to dip it in, or some sort of breaded chicken chunk which they call healthy since it is "baked" not fried. It's just not ideal.
The girl, Chris and I are already all on bagged lunches, we rarely eat lunch out more than once a week, if that (the girl doesn't like to wait in the line for the cafeteria lunches and just prefers to bring her own), so it's just one more lunch for me to make. We'll see how it goes. The last time I tried this with the boy, he kept "forgetting" he had brought a lunch and would eat the school lunch and then the lunch I made would either go to waste or be eaten after school, and that defies the whole point of the thing. But this time, I drained the money in his lunch account, so hopefully that will help him remember.
Anyways, just another day in the fight...
