Hello everyone. This is the latest post about our journey through the My Heart Challenge! We are just over 1/3 of the way through now, and doing better than ever.
Last week we went to the park 4 times, doing something different each time. One time we went and played baseball, one time playing basketball, one time just general around the park, and one time some of us played tennis while the others played on the playground and did strength training on the jungle gyms.
We have found fun ways to get our steps in as well. We were in the tennis court at the park, and Amelia kept throwing the balls to the far sides of the court…I told her to throw them to me, but she said that I needed my steps and she was helping! It is fun to get all of the kids involved in being outside and moving and playing hard. It is really a bummer when it rains or is cold, we REALLY want to be outside!We also had a couple of celebrations this week. Amelia celebrated her 10th birthday on the 18th, and one of her favorite presents was a pink tennis racket of her very own!
Now she is practicing with her own gear. She will probably be better than the rest of us in a few weeks. But we are getting better!
We also celebrated Brenda and my anniversary on the 21st. With all of the celebrations, I had some concerns with how our diet would be impacted. Birthday cake and ice cream don’t really go with low calorie options, however, we have figured out how to balance things like that.
One point of our diet in general is that nothing is out. We can eat about anything we want to, as long as we are in our calorie ranges, and we haven’t eaten a ton of garbage. Pizza, for example, is not out, but one piece every couple of weeks is better than one PIZ
Cover of Joy of Cooking
ZA every week. Things like that help us keep eating healthy, knowing that nothing is taboo. The biggest rub is that we find we don’t want to go get pizza or eat out because it is salty or we are just disappointed with the quality. We have worked for a while now, using the internet and the Joy Of Cooking cookbook to be able to make things like Chinese food, and some other favorites that the kids like.
All in all, we were fine with only a small piece of cake. Our anniversary held some lean steak with rice pilaf and broccoli, and a small piece of pie. I don’t think a pie has ever lasted as long in our house as that one did. We call that progress, because we are eating less and being satisfied with it. Throw in some exercise, and we are on a great path to being healthy overall, and not just for the challenge.
That’s all for today, we will keep updating the microblogs over there to the left every few days! There will also be a link to the past contents of those coming soon. The second part of this past week will be coming tomorrow!!
Thanks for reading, any comments are appreciated down below!