Healthier Living

A few years ago, I decided that my family needed to eat healthier. We did pretty good, but I wanted to do better. My mom had been on a diet (lifestyle change) that not only left her losing quite a bit of weight, but also feeling a great deal better. She was told that she had high cholesterol and needed to cut fats. Well, even before she changed her diet, she was always eating low fat foods. It turned out that taking away all of the fats in her diet was causing a huge problem for her. Good fats are necessary to absorb vitamins and maintain a healthy cholesterol. Lots of diets cut out needed protien and fats that also help keep your mood good and feed the brain.

I decided that we would just work on taking out of our diet the white flour and sugar. My husband had the hardest time with this. He does not like millet or oatmeal in the morning and the food tasted weird to him. I just decided to persist anyway. The kids were great about trying new things and really began to like the new way of eating. I figured I would start very simply with Brent. Saturday mornings were normally "pancake" days. I began substituting part wheat with white flour and trading out the sugar with ripe banana. That went over pretty well. I then changed that to several different whole grain flours and the banana. It took some time, but he was won over and even when he cooked pancakes, he made them my way.

Now to the present. We are doing pretty well with our lifestyle change. Some occasions are hard, but we have learned to make jut about everything whole grain and sugar free. Brent makes most of the desserts in the family and he has become really good at sugar free and whole grain recipes. The real test came recently. Mailaya had a birthday and really wanted to eat at IHOP. Brent had ordered a breakfast that had mostly meat and eggs and a couple of pancakes. I looked over and he had taken a couple of bites and that was it. I asked him if he was going to eat more and he said they tasted nasty to him, no flavor. SUCCESS!!! The kids ate his pancakes and all was well.