Health Project

For Stew's Family Medicine Rotation he had to do a health project. We decided it would be great to pretend that we were an overweight/obese family that needed a health overhaul and that our doctor gave us some guidelines we have to live by to improve our health. We thought we'd give it two weeks. So we made our "doctor's" diet:

Food:
Only Whole Wheat
Only Water and no sugar added juice (that means killing our crystal light addiction)
More veggies and fruit
Only Lean dairy
Only Lean meats
No sugar rich treats
No butter, or other saturated fats, only the good kinds ;)

Exercise:
Daily Exercise, kids and All!

As we were already making these changes it wasn't too traumatic. It was really fun to do it as an assignment for our family. Stew and I ended up losing 10 pounds combined and I think the kids seem healthier too. I think these changes will stay, not quite as exclusively but we made some really great food exchanges that were really so easy and so good for us:

Fruit snacks - dried fruit
Ice cream - fruit smoothies
Sugar cereals - whole grain low sugar variety
White refined grains - whole grains (crackers, pizza crust, bread, cereal, tortillas, rice, pasta)
Cookies - low fat,low sugar, whole wheat kind (recipe on food blog)
Juice/crystal light/ diet soda - water
Kids Whole Milk - 2% milk
Chips - Whole wheat cracker, light popcorn, nuts

We had fun being a more active family: hiking, walks, swimming, going to the park, doing races in the back yard, gardening, wrestling, and not having the TV on at all. I am proud of our little family for setting these goals and actually doing them, Go us!

For some recipes visit my Recipe Blog