Tips Archives - Page 4 of 6 - The Sweet and The Salty

I Think I’m Going To Actually Be Following Through With Regularly Exercising This Time!

By Jody September 1, 2015

I actually exercised today and it felt really good! And the fact that it was my second time this week made it even better.

I have a hard time fitting in exercise because I haven’t really been viewing it as a necessary task.

Making my son’s g tube feeds and feeding him happens daily no matter what. Making my daughters food and feeding her happens daily no matter what. Dishes and laundry happen (eventually 😉) most days no matter what.

But exercise – it hardly ever happens. It is way too often put on the back burner and in my mind falls into the “not really necessary” category.

If I don’t feed my son or my daughter or make their food or tend to their needs there are serious consequences for that. So even though I don’t always feel like doing those things, I do them every single day because I know they are necessary and that there’s really not a choice to not do them.

Not exercising though has serious consequences as well. Just not the immediate consequences other must-do tasks have, therefore it’s easier to choose not to do it.

Exercise is one of those things that I know if I don’t start making it a priority now, I will most likely somewhere in the future find myself in a predicament of really wishing I had.

There have been so many times that I have set out with the goal of exercising a couple of times a week and start off good but fall off pretty quickly.

When I fall off, next thing I know, several weeks or a month goes by and I think, “Wow that month went pretty quick, imagine if I would have just done the exercise like I said I would! I’d already be this far in and actually be where I wanted to back when I started.”

I’m learning the days come and go whether I do those things I know are good for me or not.

Life’s going to go on whether I’m spending my time wisely or not.

The seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years are going to continue quickly moving along no matter what I’m doing or not doing with them.

So why not just get it in gear and start following through with some of these things like exercise that I may not see as all the way necessary but are really beneficial and have the power to greatly improve my life!

So what’s different this time than my previous attempts at it?

This time I have it anchored really well in my schedule. It’s attached to an activity I have to do five days a week, therefore it’s going to be much harder to not follow though with.

I have an actual realistic written down plan of when exercise happens in my day to day life instead of it just being haphazardly thrown around in my mind as something to do with no actual set time to do it.

And I think for me this having an actual realistic plan for it happening may be the link I’ve been missing all along.

At the end of the month I’m going to report back how consistent I’ve been with my exercising. Although I really think having it anchored well in my schedule will make it happen, I also think having some accountability can’t hurt either 😊.

Where are you at with exercising? What hinders or helps you make it happen? If you need some accountability leave a comment and we can help each other!

P.S. I wrote a couple of years ago about exercise here and here as well. Although I’m starting over again with being consistent with it, those posts have a lot about how important it is (with some specifics for if like me you have a child with special needs) and additional ways to make it happen.

Thank you so much for reading! Have a wonderful rest of your day (or night!).

Vegetables: A Great Pick Me Up And My Cure For Over Thinking Things

By Jody August 17, 2015

There are many days that I sort of just trudge through. I wish it were different but right now it’s not. There is a lot of mundane and routine around here that goes quite a bit against my nature.

The day starts the same and ends the same everyday and the middle is pretty similar each day also. I like to think that my kids don’t know how drudgery the days sometimes are for me as I try my best to be as enthusiastic as possible for them despite how I feel.

To combat this I try to find little things that are just for myself to get excited about and have as a little treat, a little pick me up throughout the day if you will.

A few months ago I somehow stumbled into the glorious treat of steaming vegetables and melting grass fed butter on them. I had read in various places around the internet that grass fed butter is really healthy for us and that we absorb more of the nutrients of our vegetables if we eat them with a healthy fat such as….grass fed butter.

It sounded really good and freeing to be able to guiltlessly enjoy vegetables with butter and that they could be good for me that way. So I uncharacteristically threw caution to the wind, simply believed what I read and began voraciously indulging in my new treat of vegetables with butter. And wow are they delicious!

I have never been much of a vegetable eater because I never made it enjoyable for myself. I was of the mindset that if I am going to eat vegetables I am going to eat them pure, no salt, no butter, no cooking them, no enjoying them.

I had no idea all that I had been missing by doing this to myself. I now find myself craving steamed vegetables and butter and I eat them almost everyday. Instead of chips (for the most part) I am now asking my husband to pick me up some brussel sprouts and asparagus on his way home.

I’m finding that this new treat of mine is really a great pick me up in the middle of the day. Not only does it taste delicious, is quick to make, and gives me a good boost of energy but it’s also very empowering to know I am doing something so good for myself by going to town on some vegetables.

If I was instead indulging in a sugary treat (as I have definitely done numerous times) I know I would just wind up with even less energy, would be feeling bad about eating unhealthy again and I would be adding it to my list of things I torment myself with that I am doing wrong (working on this.)

Therefore eating vegetables and butter (sometimes smothered in butter) as a snack has been great not just for my physical health but for my mental health as well.

It feels good to treat myself and not feel guilty and bad about myself as a result of that treat.

And as much as I really really want my vegetable treat to be just that, my treat alone to the point where I want to enjoy it in hiding and keep it all to myself (I’m finding it that good), I would be amiss not to share the benefits with my kids. I can’t help but think it’s good for them to see me regularly preparing and eating vegetables and enthusiastically enjoying them myself. I would love for both of them (I really believe my son will eat by mouth one day) to grow to be veggie lovers too.

I know it seems odd but eating vegetables has really taught me a lot.

I’ve missed out on a lot of time that I could’ve been benefiting from and enjoying vegetables because I was too uptight about them.

I made eating them into a bigger deal than they needed to be.

I had read so much about the right way to eat them: don’t cook them too much, raw is best, don’t put anything on them, you only get the benefits if you eat them this way and on and on the information can go.

I’ve found since I’ve relaxed, loosened up a bit, gone ahead and just put some butter on them I’m finding myself enjoying and benefiting from what was once so elusive to me, even if I may not be going about it the exact perfect way.

I have a feeling there’s quite a few enjoyable beneficial things in life that have been eluding me as a result of my tendency to really over think things. To over think things to the point of doing nothing but researching, discussing my decision (or lack of) and being exhausted from all the analyzing and thinking that I just wind up doing nothing.

Eating vegetables with butter has really taught me that I need to just go ahead and live a little, and I might actually find I enjoy it.

So what if what I researched is completely wrong and grass fed butters not as healthy as the Internet claims it to be? I am now regularly enjoying vegetables and I know the benefits I’m getting from them with a little butter are way more than when I was so uptight about they way they had to be eaten that I just didn’t eat them at all.

So now as I enjoy my vegetables I find myself looking forward to finding other wonderful things in life I’ve been missing out on as a result of my inclination to over think things.

How exciting is to think (not too much though!) about all the other delicious treats of life out there just waiting to be savored!

I’d love to hear from you, do you tend to over think like me or are you more in the middle or throw caution to the wind side? Have you ever missed out on something really beneficial because of over thinking? Also if you regularly eat veggies how do you enjoy them? I’d love to hear your ideas of different ways to partake of them!

My very slow and simple way I am hoping to break the habit of eating out way too much

By Jody February 22, 2015

We have eaten out far too much for far too long.

If I am completely open and honest about our eating out habits (which I am going to be) it has been a couple of years, probably at least 3 years plus, where we have bought food out every single night and a lot of times breakfast and lunch in addition to dinner.

We hardly ever actually go out to eat in the sense of going to a restaurant and sitting down to eat, but every single night for the past couple of years my husband has been stopping on his way home from work and buying us dinner. He usually buys lunch out as well and for a long time he was also bringing me lunches at home on his lunch break.

How we picked up this bad habit and why we need to change it

I have never been the most efficient at consistently cooking but once I had my son my efficiency in this area plummeted to almost non-existent. And in some ways eating out has been a life saver when we were in extreme crisis mode and all my time was spent justifiably elsewhere.

However for some time now we have been adjusted to our “new normal” of life and don’t spend quite so much time in crisis mode the way we used to. But some bad habits have carried over to this season where things are more stable and steady, and eating out every single day for pretty much every single meal is one of those habits.

And this habit needs to change for very obvious reasons.

We are literally eating our income. Literally. Eating out all the time has definitely affected our budget and bottom line and not in the healthiest way.

And speaking of health, eating out has definitely taken a toll on both my husband and I healthwise as well.

We have gained weight, we lack energy (and five plus years of sleep deprivation isn’t helping us in the energy department), and we generally just don’t feel as good as we could.

As a result we don’t always cope with the challenges we face as a family in the best ways.

So for the sake of both our health and our budget, now that we are in a season where eating out is no longer a life saving option that we’re grateful for, but instead a bad habit that we’re struggling to rid ourselves of, I am hoping to slowly and steadily kick this bad habit to the curb.

Enter No Cook Freezer Meals

I have long loved the concept of having meals all ready to go in the freezer. However, I don’t have large chunks of time (or energy) to carve out to actually spend hours cooking meals from start to finish in advance and freezing them. (And cooking a meal from start to finish each day just isn’t an option time wise right now either).

So when I came across the idea of no cook freezer meals I was really intrigued. Basically the idea is that you prep all the ingredients for a meal and freeze them in a Ziploc bag all prepped and ready to go. Then all you have to do is thaw it out and throw it in the Crockpot or cook it the day you want to eat it.

I knew this was the way for me to break this bad eating out habit of ours. It requires some time and energy up front but not as much as doing a complete start to finish freezer cooking session. For the pay out I feel the amount of time and energy it requires is worth it.

My Plan

This past weekend I finally got around to it and set out to do my first no cook freezer session.

I chose two Crockpot meals I have made before and know that we like. I only chose two because I want to start small, be able to see some impact from it but not overwhelm myself to where I’m exhausted, get nothing else done and give up and go right back to buying out all the time.

I know from my previous failed attempts to quickly change bad habits that slow and steady is the way to go and the way to ensure that the bad habits stay away and remain replaced by the habit I desire to have instead.

My goal moving forward is to just prep and freeze two meals on the weekend (or during the week if some time happens to come free) for the next four weeks.

After those four weeks I plan on bumping it up from two meals to three meals prepped and frozen at a time. After four weeks of doing three meals I’ll bump it up to four meals and so on till I get to five meals prepped, frozen and ready to be cooked throughout the week.

This will leave room for leftovers one night and then a night of buying out as a treat (or for very hectic days). As far as the recipes I’m using I plan on using ones I’m familiar with and only adding two new recipes a month, every other week.

Going into the week I’m pretty excited to have two meals completely ready to go and all I have to do is thaw them out and pop them in the Crockpot. And I feel good that it wasn’t too overwhelming prepping the two meals, I wasn’t so exhausted from it that I wasn’t able to do anything else, and the cleanup wasn’t that bad.

I’m actually looking forward to doing two more meals next week. I have a feeling this “No cook freezer method” and increasing the amount of meals I do per week very slowly, and slowly adding new recipes to the mix is going to work very well for our family.

I will keep you updated on how it all goes!