Likes and Dislikes So Far...

It has been two weeks on the program and I am taking a look back at the few things that my kids like and what they don't.

During my "no more canned greens" effort. My daughter loves Kale and my son does not. Neither kid or the husband likes spinach. I love spinach. I made the kids eat it because they said they didn't like it before even trying it. My daughter ate it and my son had a 2 hour stand-off but he eventually ate it. They both tolerated the fresh string beans.  They both like salad. My son only eats lettuce and cheese though.:) My husband and I like salad too. My daughter and I also like the Green Giant broccoli and cheese bowls.  They are only 40 calories and 1.5 grams of fat. They are a good snack for her.  The nutritionist said that kids taste buds can change every 6 months and to give them something at least 10 times before saying they don't like it at all. I think 10 times is a lot but I will probably have spinach again next week.  They used to love spinach. We all like baked potatoes. We have to be careful with those though because of the butter, salt and cheese we want to put on there. :)

They have not had any problems switching to 1% milk and Fat Free cheese. We are still working on the "brown" bread which is what they call wheat bread.  I tell them it just looks different but the taste is not that different. In my head I am saying "I would rather have white bread too." lol  We aren't eating that much bread anyway.

Also, there was a "no more sugary drink" campaign.  My daughter had no issues.  Of course, my son was not happy. He had a few days of water and milk.  We don’t necessarily like the Crystal Light drinks but we do like the WalMart brands:) Then I tried the Sugar Free Kool-Aid and everyone likes that, even my son.  He is so stubborn! It took him a few days of him refusing and then he had to give in to the Kool-Aid. I don't know why he thought he would win:) So I am happy to say that we are a Sugar Free juice household.  The kids are probably still getting these things at school but not much. My daughter drinks "pink" milk for school lunch. The nutritionist asked her to cut that down so she had drank the fat free chocolate milk the last few days.

The kids liked the English Muffin pizzas. They can also eat these for breakfast.  I use the light English muffins and fat free mozzarella cheese. Side note: Can someone tell me why English Muffins are so expensive? They definitely do not like the Whole Grain Frozen Waffles. No problems with Sugar free Syrup.

I can tell that my daughters appetite has changed.  She is eating less and not asking for as many seconds or sweets.  I think the sweets thing is because we don't have them in the house so she doesn't see them.  We did buy sugar free popsicles and she has one of those every night for dessert.  She still will look for food when she is bored, so when I see her doing that, I try to change her attention onto something else. 

The exercise classes are still going great. My daughter is still excited to go and runs in the building every time.

Weekends

I don't know about you but weekends are the hardest time to stay on any kind of eating plan, in my house. It is so much easier to eat out or eat something quick.  We did not eat out over the weekend.  Saturday, the kids made the little English Muffin pizzas for lunch and then the same thing for dinner. Hey, it was better than McDonalds and it was Fat free cheese:)  We watched movies and had a good evening.  I know we did not eat out on Sunday but I can't remember what we had for breakfast and lunch.  We had baked chicken breast rolled in bread crumbs, baked potato and greens for dinner.  I think the baked potato was too big but it sure was good:)


I went grocery shopping yesterday. It is ridiculous how it costs so much more to eat healthy. You would think that if the companies have to do less processing, then things would be cheaper but, apparently, that is  not the case. I tried to stay on the outside wall, for the most part. I did not buy any soda, which I wanted too but I have to cut back.  I only drink diet soda, but the program teaches the kids that any soda is not a good choice.


We made it through the week with no canned green vegetables...only fresh. YAY!


I still wanted to go to Panda Express yesterday. I look at the nutrition facts and the rice was 400 calories by itself! I tried to reason but I just couldn't. I still didn't feel like cooking, since Monday's are busy for us.  I gave the kids a Smart One's Lasagna and string beans.  That dinner was under the calorie count for just the rice at Panda Express.

These Waffles Are Slop

That is what my daughter texted me yesterday morning. LOL I bought the Wheat Waffles.  I don't think they are that bad but the kids don't like them. They didn't like them last time I bought them either.  I was thinking they may have forgotten but apparently not. I bet if I put them in a regular Eggo box, they would not notice the "brown" waffles.  I don't think they taste that bad.

I have to research some good breakfast ideas. Any ideas would be great. I need to make sure there is some protein in the morning.

Dinner tonight is the crock pot chicken, that I remembered to put in the crock pot at 5am this morning, string beans (not out the can), and maybe a starch. I really want to cut back on starches but it seems weird not to have them. My son is not a big meat eater so he usually does the vegetables and starch mostly but I make him eat the meat because he needs protein. 

I am going to try some black beans soon and see how that goes.

Habits and Routines

My kids and I have habits and routines, just like everyone else. Since this blog is about health, food, etc. I will give our previous habits because they were really brought to life yesterday. It also brought to light how they need to change.  Yesterday, I didn't know if I should cold turkey change or do a gradual change. When do you know which way to go?

Habit/Routine #1 - On Monday's, my son has Cub Scouts. We usually would eat out because I had to pick the kids up, do homework, talk to them, listen to them whine about doing homework before we had to leave for the meeting. There was just no time to cook and I just didn't want to rush anymore than I already was. Now, I am married, but my husband worked until 6:00pm so he was not involved in these after school activities. Can we all say, overwhelmed mom? *lol*

Habit/Routine #2 - One or two days a week, we would go to the grocery store, on the way home from school to pick something up for dinner. Before we would even get out the car, my son would ask for a doughnut and my daughter a muffin.  Now this grocery store has great doughnuts called Colossal doughnuts and big muffins. So pre-program, I would usually say yes unless the days where, in my head, I knew they just had one earlier in the week. We get those and get whatever else we wanted in the store. If it was a day I really didn't feel like cooking, we got Ho.t Pockets. They would eat doughnut and muffin on the way home, in the car.

Habit/ Routine #3 - REPEAT #1 or #2 at least two more times

Habit/Routine #4 - No extra exercise.

Yesterday was the first Monday, after starting the program.  Now, this shows how programmed my mind is. After work, I immediately thought about going to P.anda Express. Darn, I can't go there, we are on the program. As usual, I forgot to take some meat out the freezer. I need to get better with that.  My husband has since been laid off but I even forget to tell him to take it out. *lol*

I even thing about this being our one day of eating out. Again, I had to talk myself out of it. I felt horrible.  I go get the kids and know that we won't eat out but I still have to go to the store because I have not been grocery shopping. We get to the parking lot and #2 starts.  At first I say "NO" which should have been the end of it. But then I try to rationalize and say it has to be gradual because, I will be honest, the kids looked sad and my daughter said "not even a raisin bran muffin?". I know, I know...bad mother. I told them yes but I told my daughter she could only eat half of the Raisin Bran muffin.

In the store, I got some more "bag o' greens" and frozen dinners.  There was no time to cook.  I did not get our normal frozen dinners though. I got them both L.ean Cusine dinners and I fixed a salad for them and one for myself. So that was actual another habit, I broke. We  would usually get one of the high calorie meals.  So I thought I did pretty good.

I also got my daughter the F.uze drinks.  They have a juice that is low in calories. My daughter likes them and the nutritionist said they were fine to give to the kids on the program as long as they still drink water.  There is, pretty much, no other good juice for them to have.  All of them have so many calories. Don't be fooled by the 100% juice idea because the calories are still high.

I didn't let the kids eat in the car either. We got home and ate dinner, the kids were satisfied.

We even went for a walk and the kids played tag with a little boy, on the playground.  My daughter got 45 minutes of active exercise yesterday.

All in all, I think we did OK today.  It wasn't perfect but it is a gradual change.

My daughter has exercise class today.

No Canned Greens This Week

Next week, I am going to add more greens into our diet.  I do cook greens during the week, but they are usually string beans or collards out of the can.  I am going to incorporate some fresh greens this week. I will cook up a batch of each so we can eat through out the week.  String beans can go into the crock pot but I don't know about regular greens.  It would be great if they can.  So, the goal for the week is no canned green vegetables.  Wish me luck.


In other news, the kids are at my parents this weekend.  My parents have been sticking to the program with my daughter and she is continuing to fill out her food diary.  They went out to eat yesterday and she had a grilled chicken sub.  Another goal, is not to eat out this week, at least until next weekend, and even then, something healthy.