Healthy Happy Chaos

Well these past few weeks seem to have been just a whirl wind of stuff going on and I just haven’t had any of my own personal time. Sometimes life is just funny like that, huh? But what I got to thinking throughout all the chaos is what do I do to keep moving in the right direction when it comes to my family’s health. Then I was listening to something and the comment was made that many small changes will lead to big changes. Although I have not been 100% focused on my overall health goals (and I will admit I have made some not so good choices), I know that the small things I am doing leads me to my end goal of living a healthier life.

Kiddos are going back to school finally. I know some parents have been anxiously awaiting this, especially after the past year and a half. It will be good for them to be able to interact with kids their own age again. I know that this momma is going to appreciate it because I will not have to figure out how to balance full time job, being mom, and schooling. It was rough to say the least.

With school starting back up comes an extra layer of meal prep so that our 11 year old eats decent meals for lunch. Now I am not saying the school lunches are bad, but there are just better options and I like to encourage my kiddos to have more options in terms of healthy lunches. In a previous post I shared the little cards a made years ago when he first started school. Well, he is in 6th grade now and when I went to pull those out again I thought I would literally die from the look he gave me! Apparently those cards are not cool for an older kid. LOL. Needless to say I added him to my weekly calendar instead and he has to fill it in with what he wants. He also has to help with the meal prep portion on Sundays. I wouldn’t call this a small step though, maybe more of a medium sized step because of the level of involvement with him.

At work people make plenty of comments about my meal choices and the things that I eat or do not eat. I think it is only fair that people understand that I live an 80/20 life. 80 percent of the time I am eating clean and healthy like I want to, while the other 20 percent of the time I will eat not so great. I have my favorite junk foods for sure. Pizza is totally my jam! So hard for my to resist a good pizza. But there is always the question of how do I stay so disciplined or how did I get started. it really is simple. I started with small changes. I cut out soda and candy. I added more daily water intake. every couple days once I felt I had the first change under control I would add another one. Eventually these small changes add up to help you reach your bigger end goal.

Same is true for working out. If you go all out during your first session you are going to be sore and tired. You are not going to want to go back the next day. Or if you are new to running it is not a good idea to go out your first day and run 10 miles. There are a number of small steps that you take in order to reach your ultimate goal when it comes to weight training, CrossFit, or marathon running. Or maybe you are looking to get up a bit earlier each morning. Do a gradual increase with the amount of time. When I first started my early morning routine I did just 15 min increments. So week 1 I changed my alarm time to 15 minutes earlier. I recommend giving yourself enough time to adjust before adding more time. For me this is typically 1-2 weeks. The point isn’t just to go all out and hope for the best. You need to do little steps so that you are more likely to stick to it.

I know we would all like to be able to snap our fingers and magically life is just the way we want it, but the reality is that it doesn’t work that way. We have to work hard for what we want and the one piece of advice I will give over and over again is to take small steps towards your goal. Not a long post this time around, just a small bit of advice. Reaching the goal is a fantastic feeling but the journey along the way should be just as enjoyable. Have great week y’all!