February 20, 2011

Well you will have noticed that I haven’t blogged about my walking for the last little while, it was not intentional at all. I have been doing my walks daily and even some extra walks when time has allowed.

In the last three days I have walked a total of fifteen miles. I was thinking it wasn’t very much but when I added up all my steps and converted them to miles I was like WOW!

You see it really doesn’t matter how far you walk or where you walk as long as you are moving around. I haven’t done anything different in the last three days other than go to the Vancouver Airport to pick up my oldest daughter. So, my walking totals are just from being more active than I was last year… that is a great thing!

I was reading on a website earlier today about a diet that was the ultimate in weight loss and only using walking as the exercise. I was reading through the menu and it was basically rabbit food! For breakfast you had half a slice of whole wheat bread with a thin slice of non-fat cheese and a glass of water. Hell even a mouse couldn’t survive on that!

After reading further I decided to Google diets. Everyone of the diets that I checked out were asking for people to buy things that I had never heard of and when I Googled them they were super expensive.

Do you really have the money to buy all this food? Can you really lose weight by eating what they tell you? I know I could NEVER follow a diet like any of the ones I read as the food they wanted me to eat are things that I am allergic to, or I can not digest.

As I have said many times before, don’t “diet” to lose weight, just change your food habits and portion size. If you eat three pieces of chicken only have two. If you deep-fry your chicken, coat it in cracker crumbs and bake it. There are so many alternative ways to eat food that I do not understand why there are so many diets telling you that you have to eat like a rabbit to look like one of those anorexic models.

We do not have a lot of money but I make damn sure my family eats healthy food for each meal. They do not eat like rabbits but they eat healthy. I bake my chicken, I bake the potatoes and I steam the veggies, very simple and easy. My kids eat the healthiest meat we can afford, and if it happens to be a cheaper cut of meat I will do my best to make it as healthy as I can.

Little changes each day are better than trying to get your kids to love your fried tofu the first night! You have to be sneaky sometimes to get your family to jump on the health wagon with you. I used to serve Wonder Plus bread that was whole wheat but looked like white bread and no one complained. I have served them veggie burgers before and they didn’t really know it was tofu, they just thought it was a crappy version of their normal frozen burger LOL

Call me sneaky or whatever, but sometimes you have to be sneaky to get past the picky eaters in the family. It is the same way with exercise. My friend that I sometimes walk with has three children. They are the poster children for square-eye-it is. They watch TV when they wake up and after school and do not do anything outside.

I happen to mention to my friend one day that maybe the kids would like geocaching which would get them out of the house and get them exercising even if they didn’t know it.

A week or two went by before I talked to her again and she asked if I could bring my GPS over and ask the kids if they wanted to go geocaching with us.

I showed up the following day, gps in hand, and I asked the kids if they wanted to go for a five-kilometer walk with me. They looked at me like I had grown two heads and said no they were busy.

I went and had a coffee in the kitchen with my friend and told her what her kids had told me, she said welcome to my club! My kids were never inside they were always outside playing or over at someone’s house playing, I really couldn’t understand why she didn’t just boot them outside on nice days!

I changed my tactic and walked back into the TV room with my GPS and my backpack and said to the kids, “See you later I am going to hunt treasure!” and before I could get to the front door I had three kids scrambling to find out what I was talking about.

I explained about geocaching and showed them a map of where we were going and what we were looking for. They had their shoes and coats on before my friend even had time to get her things together!

That day those kids walked a total of ten kilometers and never complained once! They were running up and down the dike we were walking on and asking how close are we now every so often. I suppose if I actually calculated up how many steps those kids took, they would have taken three times as many as my friend and I!

So, sometimes you have to be a bit sneaky with friends or family members to get things to change. Small changes with food is easier than telling them they are having tofu for the rest of their lives !

Well that is all for today. Tomorrow is a new day and with each new day comes new steps ! Happy walking everyone!

©2011 7Ladybugs
February 20, 2011