Are we really getting 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day?

• 0 • Live Well, Nutrition, Vegan

I recently watched a video on nutritionfacts.org about the percentage of people who lead a healthy lifestyle, defined for the study in question as 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week, not smoking, not overweight, and getting five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

It was 3%.

I mentioned to Greg how glad I was that we were in that three percent, and he said “are you sure?” So we counted our servings for that day.

A serving of fruit or vegetables is 1/2 a cup or 1 medium fruit, and 1 cup for leafy greens.

Maybe I got two servings out of this pizza?

   The day we saw the video I’d eaten:

  • Whole grain french toast made with soy milk & banana batter (maybe 1/4 serving of banana each?)
  • Burrito bowl with brown rice, black beans, tomato salsa, lettuce and cilantro (probably 1 serving of vegetables total)
  • Whole wheat pizza topped with mushrooms and green peppers with blueberries, carrots and tomatoes on the side. (1-2 servings of vegetables on the pizza)

 

That’s conservatively 2 and 1/4 servings from the entrees. In order to meet my daily fruit and vegetable requirement I’d have to consume an additional 2.75 servings, or about 1 and a half cups of combined carrots, blueberries and tomatoes at dinner.

I probably ate at least a cup, because they’re delicious and our family of 4 consumed this entire plate.

So on a day selected at random, I’m not sure I even made it.

Granted, these are approximations, and I could well have had more green pepper and mushrooms than 1/2 a cup since I ate three slices of that pizza.

But the point is, I’m not sure. And we only eat plants. It’s easy to assume because we eat primarily whole foods, that we’re getting enough fruits and vegetables. This just shows that there really isn’t room for empty calories.

What about the kids?

If we’re just making it, what about our kids? Their serving size is 1/4 cup because they’re smaller, but to get to 5 you still need to have them eat more than one serving at every meal of the day and another one for snack.

How often am I even putting a serving in front of them at breakfast? Andrew eats a serving of frozen wild blueberries on his oatmeal almost every day, but Will prefers cereal or granola on almond milk yogurt.

I’m not into over-analyzing food and making it a numbers game, but occasionally doing a check to see what you’re really serving (and what the kids are actually eating) can be a good reminder to keep putting those fruits and vegetables on the table alongside whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds.

Ways my kids love to eat fruits & vegetables:

  • apples and carrots with peanut butter for snack
  • sliced fruit or berries with breakfast
  • red peppers and hummus
  • cucumbers, snap peas or carrots as is
  • kale chips
  • raw broccoli dipped in braggs liquid aminos or soy sauce
  • vegetable soup where we play the “guessing game” and they try to name vegetables they’re tasting with their eyes closed
  • veggies with white bean dip

Slice / wash & serve:

One of the best ways to get vegetables and fruits in is to keep serving them, and I’ve found the easiest way to do that this time of year is to keep vegetables on hand that I can serve raw as part of snack or on the side of meals.

When you’re making snack, can you add fresh produce and reduce the number of crackers?

Before dinner, can you put out a plate of fresh fruit or sliced vegetables as an appetizer? (This is a great way to get more into kids because they’ll be hungry.)

Can you get in the habit of serving fruit with breakfast?

We had Dreena Burton’s amazing spinach and artichoke dip for lunch yesterday and I served sliced radishes, carrots, red peppers and cucumbers along side the tortilla chips for dipping. Using vegetables to eat vegetable based dip? Good way to add up those servings.

How many servings did you get yesterday? How about your kids? Any favorite ways to eat them?

Beware False Dichotomies

• 0 • Live Well, Parenting

I’m doing a yoga book club right now and we’re reading The Joy Diet by Martha Beck (which I highly recommend). Yesterday we talked about false dichotomies.

A false dichotomy is a choice between two things when in reality, you may not need to choose, or there may be additional alternatives. Sometimes we get stuck in our thinking and force ourselves to choose between two things that we want, when if we thought more creatively we might find ways to do both.

In order to problem solve, though, we first need to admit to ourselves the possibility that we don’t have to choose.

joydiet

False Dichotomy: I can either train for this triathlon that I’m so excited about, or I can have a clean house and be a great mother to my kids.

Step one: swap out the “or”. To get to a problem solving state and acknowledge the false dichotomy, I can switch the language around.

Revised Sentence: I will train for this triathlon that I’m so excited about, and have a clean house and be a great mother to my kids.

Once I’ve shifted the language to reflect my desire to do both and acknowledge it as a possibility, I’m ready to brainstorm creative solutions to the problem. Martha Beck suggests in chapter 4 of the Joy Diet that I come up with at least 20, no matter how crazy, even if they’re immoral or illegal. Rather than risk being quoted out of context saying I plan to hire a personal chef and get an au pair, I’ll give some of my more reasonable examples below.

Ideas for achieving both triathlon training AND a clean house and happy kids:

Bring out the jogging stroller again and take the kids to the playground in it

Put half the toys in the attic so it’s easier for the kids to clean up after themselves

Order take-out

Meal plan and use grocery delivery more often to save time

Hire a babysitter more often

Hire a babysitter who will organize toys

Stop checking social media on my phone 48 times a day to avoid unpleasant and tedious chores like dishes / laundry

Bring the kids to the track with a soccer ball and let them play while I do track repeats

Meet a friend at the pool who has kids that are friends with my kids so they look forward to using the gym’s play-space together

Get up an hour earlier and train then

Summer camp

Get the kids outside more so they’re not messing up indoors

Spend a week re-focusing on having the kids clean up one toy before they get out another one

Go to the pool after the kids are in bed one night a week

Create a bin of special toys that the kids can only use when I’m on the treadmill / stationary bike

Reading through all these ideas, I see some themes that will really help me achieve both of my desires. Planning meals and opportunities to train, reducing the number of toys and craft supplies the kids have access to so they could realistically clean up after themselves, getting more outdoor time for the kids (which keeps the house neater), and finding times to work out that aren’t always coming from the time I would be spending with my kids.

I love hanging out with my kids in the backyard, or cooking with them. I don’t love spending two hours every afternoon wandering around the house picking up marbles and stuffed animals and craft supplies.

These are things I can work on.

While training for a sprint triathlon is time consuming, it’s also doable. My workouts are usually less than an hour each day. That’s like having a lunch break. One hour a day shouldn’t suddenly mean that I can’t spend enough time with my children or keep my house clean.

So maybe the triathlon isn’t the real problem here, or the biggest one, or the best thing to change if I’m going to solve the problem that every day at 5 p.m. I’m not sure what’s for dinner and my living room looks like a craft store got hit by a cyclone. That isn’t because I went to the pool from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Acknowledging the false dichotomy makes me more honest about the other 11 hours I spend not training, and figuring out how to make those hours solve the problem rather than thinking I need to give up what I really love in order to have the lifestyle I really want.

I see them magazines, working that photoshop…

• 0 • Live Well

A few weeks ago, Greg was looking into upgrading Lightroom, our photo software. He’s gotten into digital photography, takes gorgeous pictures of our kids, and needs to be able to process and convert the raw images.

One discussion led to another, and he ended up explaining to me some of the reasons the new Adobe Photoshop package that includes Lightroom is so expensive… starting with the “liquefy” tool.

Liquify allows users to, um, liquify parts of images and change their shape, automatically populating the altered background with a computer rendition of what it thinks should be there.

Watching YouTube videos demonstrating the tool, I was shocked. I admit I can be a bit naive, but I assumed that when Meghan Trainor sang about magazines working that Photoshop, she was talking about people evening out celebrity skin tone and re-touching blemishes. I had no idea that they were altering waistlines, elongating necks and slimming down arms, too.

Technology is capable of altering photos to the point where there’s very little reality left.

The original photo is just a canvas for digital artists to create their own vision of perfection.

Here’s a great video that shows what some magazine covers have done to celebrity images. Now, it’s possible that the “before” images being “leaked” aren’t real either… but in some cases (such as Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar China) the images are so obviously distorted that it’s clear at least some magazines are significantly altering images. At the very least, it shows what’s possible.

Meghan Trainor says “we know that $(^t ain’t real, come on now make it stop”.

Well… I didn’t know just how unreal it was, and I doubt it’s going to stop anytime soon.

But I’m glad I know now, and as my sons get older, I want to make sure they know, too.

Magazine covers should be viewed as some sort of abstract digital art, and we should all remember that we could look that way if we had our own full-time digital artist rendering our photos.

Want to look sexier?

Smile more. When I look back at photos of myself from different points in life, I notice how happy I look before I notice anything else. A bright smile is blinding.

Want to love your body more?

Reflect on all the amazing things it can do.

Build upon that list.

My body takes me for long paddle-board rides and rainy day runs. It can haul four bags of heavily packed groceries out of the car simultaneously. It has no problem carrying a tired preschooler halfway across the mall. It’s learning to swim. It can make it through an endurance spin class and still have energy to play outside that afternoon. My body is freaking awesome.

Want to improve your love life?

Love your significant other. Be more understanding when they have a tough day. Act like MVP of your two person team. Laugh. Be compassionate.

My father-in-law is one of my favorite people because whenever I put my foot in my mouth, he spins what I said and takes it in the best way possible. He doesn’t take offense easily, in fact, it’s the opposite. He can build on a “not quite there” joke and make it hit the mark. He puts people at ease, and I know if I start back-tracking because I didn’t word something right, he’ll let me do it.

Be like that with your significant other.

So…

We can’t make it stop. But we can acknowledge that it’s not real, love our bodies for what they can do. We can work on our relationships and our health, and realize that will be more effective than agonizing about our appearance.

And sure, we can wear outfits that make us feel confident and apply some makeup, too, if we want. I love the way I look when I wear makeup. I look rested and put together, and it influences my behavior to match.

But our skin isn’t going to have an alien glow no matter what foundation you use, and celebrities don’t have perfect skin either despite the time and budget they invest into appearances.

So let it go.

And let’s make sure our kids get the message, too.

Posting Perfection: Social Media and Truth

• 9 • Live Well

Posted this photo of muffins on Instagram this morning with the following caption:

captionmuffin

Today is one of those days.

I’ve been craving muffins for a while, and when I wandered down this morning and saw I had 40 minutes before we had to leave for preschool drop-off, some spark of hope inside me burst into flames and I just had to have muffins. Forget that both kids were still in their pajamas and only one had eaten breakfast. It was muffin time. Because if I wait for the perfect circumstances to make muffins, there will be no muffins on weekdays, and weekdays are exactly when you NEED a muffin.

When I look at my Instagram account, I see photo after photo of glorious moments captured during the craziness of everyday life.

Everyday triumphs.

And even on the toughest days, there’s a moment when the kids are too cute for words, the muffins turned out perfectly, or the fresh fruit we’re eating for snack looks so beautiful that I want it to brighten someone’s spring feed.

I’m not sure what my point is here, except to look for the muffins, and realize that when everyone else is posting muffins, it’s because muffins are worth sharing… but that doesn’t mean the rest of their life looks like muffins. Embrace the muffins. The muffins are real. Everything else is real, too, but when you look for the muffin moments, you realize how many beautiful, perfect little moments there are in your day even when the rest of that day is crazy.

Muffins are made from a recipe in Dreena Burton’s amazing cookbook Plant-Powered Families, which is a new favorite in our house.

How Mindfulness Can Help You Get The Most Out Of Vacation

• 0 • Live Well, Mindfulness

This  is my view right now, as I sit sipping coffee in the Cayman islands.

I love vacation, and I’ve noticed that my mindfulness practice is helping me enjoy this one to the fullest.

I’ve been keeping up with the Headspace app, which means that most days, I sit down for 10 minutes and meditate. The guided meditation has me practicing specific mental exercises. I focus and extend my awareness of sounds in the room. I scan my body slowly from head to toe, intently noticing how I’m feeling. I pause to reflect on my underlying emotional state.

Then I focus on the breath, practicing letting thoughts come and go without resistance and without following them. Gently bringing my attention back to the breath as soon as I notice I’ve been distracted. Being aware of the thoughts but not judging them, just noticing them and returning to my focus on the breath as soon as possible.

These skills have all translated to an increased ability to enjoy this vacation.

I’m less distracted. More aware of my surroundings. Able to focus more intently on the feeling of my feet in the sand, the warm breeze, the impeccable view.

I can more easily let go of thoughts that would distract me from enjoyment of the present moment. Out on the paddle board, I can let go of worries about not being with my children right then, or the fact that I haven’t checked my e-mail in six hours. Without resisting the thoughts, I can acknowledge them, let them go, and return to the feeling of the board under my feet and the beauty of the blue sky ahead.

These are things I have always tried to do on vacation, but they’re much easier when you’ve been practicing letting thoughts come and go without resistance or focus.

I’m much more skilled at not worrying about things I have no control over at the present moment, because for 10 minutes a day, I practice letting go.

One of the books I’m reading right now encourages people to find a system of organization that will allow them to keep track of every “open loop” on their to do list so they don’t have to store any of them in their mind. It jokes that your mind is really kind of stupid, because it reminds you that you need batteries for the flashlight when you try to use the flashlight, not when you walk by batteries in the store.

How often do we let our minds do this, remind us of things at the wrong time, when there’s nothing we can do about them? A daily mindfulness practice has helped me not to spend my time on the paddle board worrying about what to feed the kids for snack, and my time making snack for the kids day-dreaming about being back on the paddle board.

I feel like the dog in that Cat Vs. Dog diaries because I’m able to enjoy each moment more while I’m in it. I focus on the calm enjoyment of being with my children and caring for them when we’re together, then fully experience the freedom when I have the chance to be out paddling the Caribbean.

And that’s worth a lot more than 10 minutes a day 🙂