Just over 2 years ago I gave up smoking. I used to smoke a packet a day and couldn't go to bed if I didn't have at least 5 cigarettes in my packet. Smoking totally ruled my life. I never even imagined that I would at some stage be able to give it up. Luckily that day came when I no longer felt like having a cigarette so with the help of modern medicine I was successful in giving up the worst habit ever.
Unfortunately while trying to give up smoking I put on almost 20 kilos. Being over 40, it's not that easy to shake off the extra kilos. I also found that my head wasn't in the right head space. From the age of approximately 16 I started dieting. I was constantly trying to lose some weight, shape up, look better and be slimmer. I think when I turned 40, my body just said, "enough, I'm not doing it anymore".
Unfortunately when you put on weight, it's not just your appearance that changes, but your health suffers as well. My blood pressure went up. In fact it got way too high to a point where I now have to take medication to keep it under control. I don't want to keep taking the medication, however the only way to bring down my blood pressure is to lose weight and get myself healthy again.
However working full time and having a family makes it very difficult to exercise and cook healthy variety of meals. So most of our dinners that I would prepare would contain carbs and my kids used to predict what we would be having for dinner each week as there really wasn't much of variety. When I get home by 5pm, kids are usually asking me what's for dinner so I would prepare something that was quick and easy.
While chatting with friends on NYE, I decided that my NY's resolution this year would be to bring more healthy meals and variety into our dinners. I love to cook and have a lot of cook books so I decided that I would try and cook meals out of my cook books and write about the meals we have for dinner. It will probably be good for kids to have an input into what I'm cooking by them suggesting what they would like to have for dinner. I'm hoping that by planning our meals, it would help my weight loss. Also writing what I'm having for each meal would probably help.
I could have just started a diary or journal but I decided to create a blog because I know that there are a lot of mothers who go through what I go through every day trying to figure out what to cook after work and I thought that it would be a good idea to create a blog where other mothers could add their recipes and swap and also suggest what might be helpful to assist with weight loss. You watch TV and see all these ads that try to sell you shakes, programs, pills etc etc. The bottom line is to figure out what are the right things to eat, how much and to do some sort of exercise.
So here it is. My first entry in my Blog. I'm not sure what I will cook for tomorrow yet. Probably something like a BBQ chicken and some grilled veggies and salad. My kids like BBQ.
That's all for now.
Anna
