I'm sitting here writing you from my comfy chair here in Bahrain but more important than where I'm sitting is what I'm sitting in, my favorite jeans that four months ago I couldn't pull up past my thighs! When I moved to Bahrain I couldn't wait to start eating at all the restaurants I'd loved and missed from when we lived here before so I spent the first few months eating my way through Bahrain. I actually did notice I was gaining weight but it didn't really bother me all that much. That is until I became really sick in mid February. Oh boy, I hadn't been that sick EVER! Which was a problem since I couldn't afford to take sick leave. I was it for my children, teacher and mother. My husband, seeing my plight, took a couple days to help teach and take care of the students:) but I had to get better. Each one of our kids started to get sick as well and two of our children were down with it in a bad way. I wasn't much good to either of them in my state and felt terrible to see them so sick. I ended up conducting a few classes from bed that month and it was on one of those dark days I decided health isn't about weight it is about being able to do life the way it was meant to be done; with my whole heart and mind and I can't unless I'm healthy and help it along.
I knew I had a book in one of my many unpacked book boxes that I had bought eight years prior when I had first wanted to start our family on a healthy path. I dug it up and got to reading. The book "30 Days to a Healthier Family" by Peggy Hughes lays out a plan that is wonderful for getting the entire family on board to a healthier lifestyle. My first stop was to the copy store down the street where I had them (from the book) copy and laminate a food pyramid to place on the fridge door along with some little cards that had snack suggestions to put along side of the pyramid. Then with her brilliant program she has the family have a weekly meeting in which we have an activity, talk about our progress, learn a new healthy habit lesson, and set goals for the upcoming week. I copied off all the worksheets for each of the family members to participate with for the entire 30 days because I know myself well enough now that if I don't plan all at once something will come up and throw that the whole thing off and I had to be committed.
Here is how it went: I woke up early on the first day and popped in a workout video and started exercising as everyone gradually made their way out of bed and each and everyone of the family members came and sat on the couch behind me and asked what I was doing. I realized that I had never really exercised in front of them and it was a new phenomenon. I would work out at the gym before but they were in the gym's day care and didn't actually see me exercise. They stayed there watching for almost the entire 40 minutes. In the evening we had our family meeting and I introduced our new program with a game, always a crowd pleaser. I taped on the floor each of the food groups and chose a different family member for each food group. They each had 2 minutes to run to the kitchen (right next to our family room) and grab as many items as possible to put in 'their' food group. The child with the most items in their food group won the prize. They had so much fun but I was surprised that as much as they had studied the food groups at school and talking about it at home in the past that I was having to tell them what other foods they could put in their group when I assumed they knew already. It was such a great activity to get them excited about eating healthier and KNOWING what foods to choose from! Afterwards we had them test their flexibility by measuring how far they could stretch, how many push ups they could do, and so on. We let them know that we would be testing them again at the end of our family challenge to see if they improved. It was important to not put all the focus on either eating or exercising but understand the two go hand in hand.
I kept a food calendar (from the book) in the pantry and had the kids fill it in as we went along. It wasn't the most successful part of the program since it is hard to keep track but after a while we just started a pattern to keep it easy instead of having to write everything we eat down. For example, Thursday is always wheat pancakes with applesauce and Tuesday is always our chicken and veggies night. The family program also has you introduce a new food each week and gives fun recipes to help you along the way. As I exercised six days a week the kids started their own workout schedules without any coaxing from me or my husband; it was awesome! The meetings were all layed out so I just followed along and passed out the worksheets as it was called for. The worksheets vary from simple, "Circle the foods that grow on a vine", to, "On a scale of 1 to 10 questions". The work on educating was pretty much done for us we just needed to implement which honestly is more than half the battle when changing your lifestyle.
10 weeks later we can say, "We are getting there!" Today the whole family was swimming in the pool having a great time and I was contrasting it to where we were back in February and I can't help but think this is the way life was meant to be done.
With Love,
Nonnie
I knew I had a book in one of my many unpacked book boxes that I had bought eight years prior when I had first wanted to start our family on a healthy path. I dug it up and got to reading. The book "30 Days to a Healthier Family" by Peggy Hughes lays out a plan that is wonderful for getting the entire family on board to a healthier lifestyle. My first stop was to the copy store down the street where I had them (from the book) copy and laminate a food pyramid to place on the fridge door along with some little cards that had snack suggestions to put along side of the pyramid. Then with her brilliant program she has the family have a weekly meeting in which we have an activity, talk about our progress, learn a new healthy habit lesson, and set goals for the upcoming week. I copied off all the worksheets for each of the family members to participate with for the entire 30 days because I know myself well enough now that if I don't plan all at once something will come up and throw that the whole thing off and I had to be committed.
I kept a food calendar (from the book) in the pantry and had the kids fill it in as we went along. It wasn't the most successful part of the program since it is hard to keep track but after a while we just started a pattern to keep it easy instead of having to write everything we eat down. For example, Thursday is always wheat pancakes with applesauce and Tuesday is always our chicken and veggies night. The family program also has you introduce a new food each week and gives fun recipes to help you along the way. As I exercised six days a week the kids started their own workout schedules without any coaxing from me or my husband; it was awesome! The meetings were all layed out so I just followed along and passed out the worksheets as it was called for. The worksheets vary from simple, "Circle the foods that grow on a vine", to, "On a scale of 1 to 10 questions". The work on educating was pretty much done for us we just needed to implement which honestly is more than half the battle when changing your lifestyle.
10 weeks later we can say, "We are getting there!" Today the whole family was swimming in the pool having a great time and I was contrasting it to where we were back in February and I can't help but think this is the way life was meant to be done.
With Love,
Nonnie
