The Adventures of Weight Loss

This morning I was able to catch this great picture of Samuel.  He emptied the top shelf of the tupperware cupboard and then crawled in.  Oh to be 1-year-old again.

He never stops moving.  Just an hour later I looked down from the sink while washing dishes and found him coloring all over himself with a pen. He loves to find pens and pencils left unattended.  I think that's one of the products of homeschooling.  We have writing utensils everywhere and he thinks it's so cool to use them too.

All before 10am he had three pictures of his adventurous morning.  That's my Sammy.  He makes an adventure out of life.  By the time lunch arrives he is exhausted but doesn't even know it.  He falls asleep in his high chair at lunch nearly every afternoon because that is the first time he has stopped moving since 6am.

This adventurous morning got me thinking about how a toddler so easily can make a morning an adventure to be photographed. It made me wonder what I could do to make my life adventurous too.  Don't get me wrong, it's an adventure to clean up all of the tupperware and to give him a bath but I'm not sure that's the kind of adventure I had in mind for losing weight.

Now I'm thinking about what can make losing weight and staying healthy more of an adventure.  What can keep it exciting so it doesn't get boring?  What games can I play to keep it something that is in the forefront of my mind?

I'm thinking about things such as my highlighting the number on my calendar when I exercise each day.  I know it may sound silly and so minor, but I like seeing that number highlighted.  It gives me some satisfaction to see it and another reason to put in the exercise DVD in the morning.

Another idea is to plan the fruit or vegetable for dinner or snack before I plan any of the other dishes.  That is completely backward from how I have done it for all of my life.  I have always planned the main dish and side dish first.  Then I would finally think about what fruit or vegetable I could throw in.  Since we are focusing on fruits and veggies more in my house these days I would like to plan that food group first at each meal or snack.  Because this is so different for me it will make me think harder when planning and a change in our thinking is good for us too.

A third idea is to come up with a new obsession.  This may sound odd but many times I feel like food is an obsession in our house.  We are always thinking about the next meal, snack or dessert.  We often think of family time being spent eating.  I can tell that is how Bryan and I are and now our kids have that same habit too.  When we are together as a family for an evening the kids automatically want to find a fun snack or dessert that we can all share.  Tonight we found family games to play instead of food to eat.  It was a wonderfully fulfilling time together and it didn't include an overload of calories.  In fact the games started over dinner and we found ourselves having so much fun with the games that eating seconds wasn't a thought.

A fourth idea is to keep my food choices varied.  At this time of the year I find myself all ready to eat all of the healthy stuff to detox my system from the choices of November and December.  The danger to eating the same healthy stuff day after day is that it gets boring and then the junk looks so appealing all over again.  I'm challenging myself to find some new foods to enjoy.  They can be healthy but they don't have to be the same old, same old.

As I look forward to the new adventures that my children bring into my life day after day I am also going to look forward to my own new, healthy adventures too.

Do you have anything that you use to keep your healthy life adventurous?

Have a healthy day,
Corinna

"My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing." -James 2-4