Saturday, August 14, 2010

Day 75: Family PCP

One of the most surprising things to me about doing this project has been how it's changing the way my family eats.

I've written before about how my husband is very supportive of me, and has continued to be my biggest cheerleader the more he sees the positive results and my continued commitment. But we've had a lot of difficulty with figuring out how to eat together in the past few weeks, especially during that long stretch of apple & egg white suppers. He likes healthy food but he has more traditional tastes than I do -- his favorite meal is going to be meat, potatoes, and veg. Usually I shop & cook for the both of us, but I haven't been doing that so much. He's a great cook but I figure that if I'm home during the day and he's working 12 hours, I can do something nice for him by having something ready when he gets home. So he's had to figure out some meals for himself recently, and I've noticed that just by virtue of the fact that there's more healthy food in the house, he's eating better.

Tonight we were both really tired (he worked all day today, and I got up at 5:30am to work out before he left), and I had that feeling of "let's order a pizza." Which is not, by the way, equivalent to "I want to eat pizza." "Let's order a pizza" means "I'm too tired to figure out what to eat, let's pay someone to bring me something to shove in my face." But since ordering a pizza isn't an option for me at the moment, we both had to figure out something else from what we had in the fridge. I didn't have anything great (some leftover chicken, a few shrimp, some carrot sticks and some cherry tomatoes) but it did the trick. It's nice to know that I can rustle up some dinner without having to think too hard.

My daughter had a totally PCP-friendly supper tonight: plain boiled shrimp, chopped cherry tomatoes, applesauce, milk. Again, we're more likely to serve her good stuff if we have it in the house. I know that I haven't always been great about feeding her the healthiest possible stuff, partially because we tend to feed her around 6 or 6:30, then we make our own supper after she goes to bed at 7 or 7:30. So I'm not about to cook a whole meal just for her, and I confess that I have relied on things like mac & cheese or frozen chicken nuggets (but the good, organic, white-meat-only kind) because they're quick, easy, and she'll eat them. But I'm learning how to string things together to make a meal, and that it doesn't have to be a big deal to throw some chicken tenderloins in a grill pan with some lemon juice. (In fact, I think I do this pretty much every day now.) It's really important to me that she grows up to enjoy healthy food, but I hadn't been able to figure out how to make that happen on a daily basis.

I also love that when she sees me in my sports bra and shorts, she says, "You goin' to do your exercise?" Too cute. When I started this project, she was a big inspiration for me. I want her to have a healthy mom, and to be able to see me as a role model for an active life. Standing halfway inside the pantry and shoving cookies in my mouth, hoping she doesn't see me, is not the lesson I want to teach.

Today's been good. Workout tough as usual (blah blah blah, say this every time), food is pretty much YUM.

One other funny thing from yesterday. I ran to the grocery store to get a few things: cherry tomatoes, kale, mushrooms, whole wheat pasta, chicken, yogurt, soy milk (for lactose-intolerant husband). My grocery store has this thing where the receipt machine spits out automated coupons based on what you bought. I get a lot of coupons for baby wipes, for example, if I'm buying diapers. Well, yesterday the coupon was for... Lean Cuisine frozen dinners. I guess the assumption is that if you're buying all of that kind of minimally processed food, you must be on a diet. So, of course, you want some salt-infused nearly unrecognizable frozen crap! 50 cents off!

7 comments:

  1. Ha! The lean cuisine is the only thing they can sell you with a coupon since real food doesn't get those kind of discounts. Kind of a shame really.

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  2. Your daughter is so cute !
    This is really a nice post.
    She grows up looking at her mom caring about health and her dad supporting mom.
    How nice.

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  3. Way to go--getting your whole family into a healthier state of being!

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  4. I'm so glad you're becoming the healthy mom and great role model you set out to become 76 short days ago!!

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  5. God, wouldn't it be nice if they would give you a 20% off produce coupon or something?

    Good post. I love how our new habits start to rub off on the people around us. I don't live with a family, but my friends tend to make healthier choices when I'm around now.

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  6. Yay for changing your whole family's food habits! My head cheerleader on the homefront lost 15 lbs while I was doing the PCP! I guess the diet is everything!

    On the coupons for produce-- they do exist! Check out this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/business/13veggies.html

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  7. Great post.

    This experience has changed you - all of us.

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