Geek Goals

This year is about getting my sanity back. Getting my health my house and my family into a better place by deliberate incremental changes in all areas of my life.

Friday, October 05, 2007

My view

Hi Ladies,

Like Danielle said, I have been invited as an author to this blog so I can post now.

I'll start with a bit of my background. As a teenager I was very active and never had to worry about what I ate because my mom always cooked healthy, delicious, Spanish meals and I never learned how to cook because I didn't have to. Since I was active, I never thought of "being healthy" but then I went away from home for college. I had no clue how to cook so I'd call my mom to help me make a grocery list and talk me through cooking the meals I would eat for the next 3 days. I didn't always have time for that so I ended up buying a lot of frozen foods, like pizza. I started gaining weight and my activity level greatly decreased.

Then I got married to Brian (which you have all met I'm sure) and he IS an amazing cook. That worked out great because I didn't know what I was doing in the kitchen. Well, it turned out that it wasn't so great because I kept on gaining weight. I took notice that my clothes wasn't fitting me anymore and tried a couple diets that worked, until I stopped doing them :-)

To make the long story short....I've grown up and figured out that it's important to be healthy for other reasons than just appearances. My father has diabetes and so does everyone else in his side of the family. Chances of me getting diabetes are huge, but I am 26 years old and ready to prevent ever having to deal with that.

My ultimate goal is to never ever feel like I'm on a diet or that I'm restricting myself from eating anything yet still live a healthy life. If it wasn't for my jeans feeling tighter and my shirts smaller, I wouldn't worry about my appearance...I don't want to spend tons of money in new clothes when I know that I'm working towards a goal that will solve that.

I'm very far away from my ultimate goal, but I have milestones, which I like to call mini-goals, that will help me get there. Here they are in no particular order...

mini-goals
  1. Cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner myself
  2. Wake-up on weekdays at 6:15AM to exercise, 8AM otherwise
  3. Drink 8-10 glasses of water daily
  4. Cut out coffee completely
  5. Don't miss a day - one day at a time
I'm sure there are more mini-goals that I'm forgetting, but these are the most important ones to me right now.

The most difficult one is #1. I have to admit that Brian has learned to cook healthy and even though he complains, I think he's OK with it. Since this is the most difficult one for me, I need help in this area and that's why I want to propose to you to help me begin a virtual recipe club. I was hoping that you all can help me figure out all the details, but it will require commitment. It shouldn't be difficult because you have to cook at least once a week (or month?), right?

I was thinking that each one of us could post a healthy recipe once every month, this will change later I'm sure. Ideally the recipe should be hearty and contain carbs, vegetable, and protein. Since it's only 3 of us, we will each have 2 recipes to try out in that month and we can then comment on it. That's it, easy isn't it?

Let me know of your ideas :-)

I promise this will be the only post that is this long!!

~Jossie

5 comments:

Karen said...

Good goals! Some I'm working on as well, except for the coffee -- its an indulgence I get to keep. =) I'd love to be able to get up in the morning to workout but it never happens.

I can't say I learned much about cooking growing up from my family. A lot of the food we ate involved a can of this, can of that, like cream of mushroom soup. In theory I knew about cooking from 4-H food projects, home ec, etc. But it wasn't practiced in everyday meals. And it was thought eating the school lunch would help expand my horizons. Blah. In college I ate a lot of pizza, rice, mac and cheese, ramen, or spaghetti with cheese and butter, or some other meal that came out of a box or bag and was cheap.

Fortunately my husband is good in the kitchen. Doesn't follow recipes, but knows how to make family recipes based on taste, feel, sight, and even sound. That came in handy the first time he adapted his meatballs to be gluten-free for me. But not necessarily healthy. :) I'm more a follow the recipe type of person. You likely won't want any of my recipes since they lack in fiber and carbs. But I'm working on using more variety of grains like teff. I also want to include more Omega-3's and reduce the other fats.

ladykatya said...

Hey girl - I would like your recipies that lack fiber and carbs! They sound perfect for supper for me! :)

Danielle said...

Jossie - How about if one person posted a recipe, and in a 2 week span the others in the club tried it out?

That way if we have more people join we don't increase the commitment.

If it works out well we can speed it up to every week.

Finding a recipe for me will be hard because I'm not the main cook in my couple either! Can Brandon join with us?

:D

Karen said...

Oops, I lied, I guess the recipe I posted has a lot of carbs and some fiber. I should eat it more. :)

Jossie said...

Danielle - that's a great idea. Lets do 2 weeks, an extra week for starters so 10/30 might still work. And of course Brandon can join!

Karen - as long as they're good carbs, the recipe applies. Besides, like you said, we can modify it to fit our needs.