Three of Five Positively Healthy Choices Everyday!

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It refuels your body and energizes your mind for the beginning of a new day. Now I have always been a big breakfast advocate. It is easy and cheap to make and generally children love breakfast food. I know it sounds crazy but my children always had a hot breakfast even when I had to be to work by 7:00 in the morning. Most of the breakfasts took less than 10 minutes to make and no, they didn’t have cold cereal every day. I fact my daughter would look at you like you were crazy if you thought she was going to eat cereal more than one day a week and then it had better be Lucky Charms. Each of my children has their favorites. One likes waffles, the other french toast and the other anything as long as there was bacon. Sometimes we would even have breakfast for dinner.

I recently discovered something I didn’t know about breakfast. To make a breakfast truly healthy you need to eat at least three of the five food groups. It doesn’t matter which three as long as there are three represented on your plate. It may seem silly but it really does make a difference. For years I have told friends that cereal for breakfast never filled me up. It was like the old expression about Chinese food, you eat it and an hour later you are hungry. In my quest to improve my health and keep an eye on my cholesterol number I have been eating more whole grain cereal for breakfast. What I never realized was that in the past when I ate cereal I was only eating from two of the five food groups, grains and dairy. No wonder I always felt hungry when I ate cereal and not other food for breakfast. Since I discovered this I simply add a banana to the cereal and it fills me up until lunch.

The other meals in the day need to follow that same rule by containing at least three of five food groups. It just seems that the other meals take care of themselves better than breakfast does. Poor breakfast, the most important meal of the day, gets pushed and shoved around. Some people eat nothing for breakfast and run out the door with a coffee cup in their hand then wonder why they can hardly move for most of the morning. Or they make a quick stop for a donut or pastry and feel fine for a short time until the sugar high runs out.

The important thing about breakfast is that it doesn’t need to be hard, time consuming or complicated to make. Remember it only needs to be three things to be healthy. Pick a fruit, add a protein, drink some milk and you have three of five. Make a peanut butter sandwich then add either a piece of fruit or some milk and you have three of five. Grab a yogurt a small bag with dry cereal add some fruit and you have three of five. Make a homemade egg sandwich (egg, english muffin, cheese) again three of five. Your three of five doesn’t even have to be what most people would consider breakfast foods. How about a ham and cheese sandwich, guess what it is three of five. Even pizza is three of five. All of these take five minutes or less to make and are highly portable. You would even be able to count your coffee as one of the food groups if it contains a cup of milk. That is of course if you leave out the fancy flavorings and whipped cream on top. Can you say Latte?

Become a three of five breakfast advocate at your house and make breakfast the most important meal of the day. This simple healthy habit will follow everyone you live with through their lifetimes and help create healthy lifestyles. Remember that breakfast doesn’t need to be big and fancy, save those three course breakfasts for special days or the weekends. Make breakfast fun and keep things easy. By keeping breakfast simple everyone can start their day healthy and ready for what the new day holds. Make three of five one of your family's positively healthy choices everyday!

Good Friends…Positively Healthy Choices Everyday!

If you are like me I have friends from all walks of life, they live in assorted places and I met them at different times in my life. I was reminded a few nights ago how special friends are and the bonds we create with them while chatting with a high school friend. The memories made with these special people are always held close to our hearts and generally fill our lives with happiness. Good friends, create great moments that turn into lasting memories which create good mental health. Having good mental health makes everything in the world look and feel better.

When times get tough and the going gets rough it is these wonderful memories that help keep us going. I have memories around cookies, leotards, tracing feet, homemade pie and the list goes on. Some of these memories have become part of everyday live and get relived often while others only appear at special moments or times. Sometimes I can even choose to make the memories appear and grow them with new additions. Many times these great memories include not only my friends but other family members as well.

My children and grandchildren have vivid memories of standing on a piece of paper while I traced their feet so that Auntie Reva, my good friend, could bring them shoes. No one was allowed to go anywhere close to Auntie Reva’s home or work without Chocolate Crackle Cookies to deliver to her and the family. Her two girls have known these cookies since they were small and they are now all grown up but you mention those cookies and their eyes still light up. Very special cookie memories created for not one family but two families.

My friend Diana is my sewing buddy. Our daughters did gymnastics together for many years and our sewing fun started with leotards. If I sewed one for my daughter, her daughter got one and if she sewed one for her daughter, mine got one. The material was cheap and the girls were so small we could get two leotards out of every piece of material we bought. So leotards by the drawer full they had. I would bet that at any given time the girls had twenty leotards each, if not more. Over the years there have been many more sewing projects adding to these great sewing memories.

Then there is my friend Toni. She makes the best pie crust I have ever eaten. Now I do a lot of baking but one of things I can’t make is good pie crust. So one Thanksgiving she and the family come over for dinner with the plan being for me to learn to make Toni’s wonderful pie crust. We start as soon as she got to the house but things quickly went from bad to worse. Soon I was in tears and Toni had taken over because I just can’t do it. Since that day Toni has always made my holiday pies. We call it our holiday trade, she makes my pies and I make her dinner rolls. Everyone is happy and doing what they do best.

It doesn’t matter what you do with these special friends because they will make anything feel special. My friend Debby runs errands with me every weekend. You know she has to be special because who else would go to the grocery store with you and eat Taco Bell for lunch every weekend. Where do good friends fit into your life? Are you creating as many happy memories as you could with them? Is there a way to add to the memories you have already created? Surround yourself with the people that make you happy and minimize your time with the people who don’t. Your attitude and self worth are too important to your well being to be around negative or toxic people. As for me, I am riding down memory lane with my high school friend in his dad’s blue MG convertible remembering that good friends make positively healthy choices everyday! 

The positively unhealthy 1% ....

Everyone has their doubts about choices made in their lives. No matter what you do there is always that 1% of doubt. But that small 1% causes us the most grief. We will analyze and analyze the situation over and over. To be truthful we will analyze it the death. Why do we let something so small rule our lives? It seems very silly when you look at the situation as a whole because there is nothing in anyone’s live that is guaranteed. Now that doesn’t mean you should wear black at night and walk down the middle of the road or take careless chances but how much worrying is healthy. Remember that worrying needlessly could be a big health risk. The more you worry the greater the stress and for some reason worries seem to build on worries. Sometimes we let those worries and doubts get out of control then all of a sudden the 1% has taken over our lives.

Now there have been many occasions when I have let the 1% get the best of me. That doesn’t mean that I let it control my final decision but it was there nipping at my heels. Quite a few years ago not long after my divorce the car I had died. I worried and worried. My daughter would be home from college the next week and there would be no car.  I cried and cried there were so many questions and so many unknowns. Would I be able to get a loan, how does one even go about buying a car? I took the process one step at a time. I called my two banks to see if I would even qualify for a loan as I had my doubts and waited nervously for them to call back. When they said yes I started looking for a car and with that came more doubts. The choices, there were just too many choices. When I had narrowed down the choices, with the help of my teen age sons and knew what I wanted it was time to start the real shopping. I had a coworker take me on my lunch hour to the local car dealer for a test run at dealing with the sales person. I was hyperventilating all the way there. I recited the lines I had been practicing and made it through the test run. 

With my sons in tow we set off on that Saturday to the first car lot. This was the same place I had practiced just a few days ago. Now I knew from my research that they really couldn’t give me the things they promised but I thought we should see what they could come up with. So there we sat in the office and haggling over the price. Back and forth they went from us to another office and back several times. The next time they left I looked at my boys and said, “If they don’t come back with a deal we are walking out!” When they came back without the deal and only more haggling we got up I said thank you and we left. I have never seen two such shocked men in my live. We left, drove to the next dealer, told them our story and a new car we came home with. To this day it is the boys’ favorite story to tell about their mother. If I had let that 1% of doubt rule my life and control my choices we would still be without a car.

Most of the decisions we make fall into that 99%. We have to learn and sometimes remind ourselves not to let the 1% over take our lives. Think about the last time you second guessed yourself only to realize to late that you were correct the first time? Learn to trust yourself and the choices you make.  Yes occasionally they will be wrong but if you really look at all your choices you make every day I think you will find that 99% of the time you have made positively healthy choices. So the next time doubt creeps into your life look around and see if it is that positively unhealthy 1% creeping in instead of the positively healthy 99%.