May 262016
 

This is part 2 of a very long post!  If you haven’t, please read part 1 here

This week Brenda was doing the stairs at work and said she was able to do 5 flights before she had to stop for a minute, and that is up from 3 flights just a couple of weeks ago.  She then did the other 9 flights.  If you didn’t know, she works on the 14th floor at Intermountain Medical Center, and walking up the stairs is a good way for her to get some cardio in while she is at work.  And these are not the standard flights of stairs, they are wider, a bit taller and about 3 stairs longer than a standard stair case.

We also had another nutrition class this past week, talking about planning out meals and making sure we are getting healthy ingredients to fill each meal with.  The kids got to come to this class, or at least a parallel class that was taught by one of the dieticians from Primary Children’s hospital.  They learned about the My Plate method of making sure you are getting the right portions of food at each meal, and then we all got together and planned out a week of meals.

And finally, Tuesday Brenda and I got to take a tour of Harmon’s Grocery store as part of the challenge.  It was interesting to note that Harmon’s has 6 full time dieticians that rotate around their stores and are available to answer questions.  You can even set up appointments for them to take you on your own grocery store tour and help you choose healthy options.  Another great thing about Harmon’s (no they are not paying me to talk about them, but I would gladly accept donations if they did) is that on the shelves, they have green labels that say “Dietician’s Choice” under a bunch of products.  These have been determined by the dieticians to be lower in sugars, sodium and high in protein or fiber, so they are good choices to grab if you are in a hurry.

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May 242016
 

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! Continue reading »

May 202016
 

Hello everyone.  This post is not a recap of the first part of the challenge but it is about the last week!  It all started on Mothers Day this week.  While we didn’t do much on Mothers Day as far as exercise, but we were ready to hit it hard on Monday.  You know, there is a debate over when the week starts and ends, in our family we tend to use Sunday as the end of the week.  But the calendar says the week starts on Sunday.

Monday we got started with exercise again.  We are still eating pretty well, even if we slacked on our vegetable and fruit consumption.  We have had to figure out a different budget that lets us have more money available to keep fresh fruits and veggies around.  Monday and Tuesday we were a little short on fresh stuff, but we were able to stock up again on Wednesday.  As I sit here writing this on Monday morning, we are almost out of fresh stuff again!  We have eaten a bag of apples, a bag of pears, a bunch of bananas and most of a case of oranges.  Not to mention the broccoli, and spinach.  We try to keep some good veggies in the freezer as well, but we like the fresh stuff. Continue reading »