Healthy wife, healthy life

We have really been focusing on daily fitness at our house, which makes me realize we really weren't focusing on fitness at our house! We're mostly healthy, we eat most meals together daily (kids obviously eat lunch at school), I cook those meals myself, outside of meals I push fruits and veggies and water for snacks, I feel like everyone runs around and we try to get out and hit parks and ride bikes and stuff... but I had a minor meltdown at Eli the other day.

In Ninja class they do basic fitness moves like sit-ups and pushups (I mentioned that), but of course class is only one night a week, so I had been encouraging a short fitness *something* before bedtime - usually a kids workout video or some exercises together. He kept giving up - "I can't do pushups, I can't do lunges, I can't do sit-ups..." so I hauled him to bed and sat and stewed and brainstormed. I have a high metabolism and can basically eat what I want - within reason - and be generally active and not worry about gaining a single pound. Eli is a whole different animal, and my approach to health has apparently not been working with his body type. He looks exactly like Joe did when he was Eli's age, and then Joe had a crazy growth spurt in middle school and leaned out, then bulked up with muscle for football and track. GREAT, except I do NOT want to sit around hoping that in 8 years Eli will luck out and lean out without any contributing outside factors. JOE also doesn't want that for him because, from experience, he says "it is no fun being the fat kid." So even though I've been conscious in the back of my mind, I haven't been focusing on fitness, and that needed a boost.

Changes include:
60 possible minutes of screen time, as usual, but minutes are earned by exercise. If you do 0 minutes of exercise, you get 0 minutes! Anything above and beyond 60 minutes of exercise, though, you still only get 60 minutes of screen time.
Dessert is a weekend thing. I LOVE dessert (do you even know me at all?!) so I made something sweet nearly every night, but in an effort to ditch unnecessary calories I had to calm down on the frequency.
I've been sending along CapriSuns in their lunches. I now only send water.
Our weekend fast-food trip as a family has been reduced to every-other weekend. This was actually a financial decision, but dovetails nicely.
Last but not least, I need to re-think exercise.

Here again, Eli is a different animal. I really enjoy the gym! I enjoy that physical challenge, I enjoy sets and reps, I enjoy working on my form, I like competing with myself. Caroline and Patrick also enjoy these things! Eli enjoys none of these things. Many articles I came across reiterated that kids get exercise differently than adults. Running around at the park is fun and healthy and involves running - I SIT at the park, and if I wanted to exercise I would run laps around the park. Different, see? But both running. So I have been brainstorming ways to be active without saying, "hey everybody! We're about to be active!" It gets tricky when it's not a ninja night and the weather isn't cooperative, but that's when my Mall Bingo from my last post came in handy.

For the future, though, I signed up the boys for soccer, because RUNNING. Starting in March.