My Last Today’s Parent Healthy Family Challenge Post

Today my last post for the Healthy Family Challenge ran on Today’s Parent. You can see all of my Healthy Family Challenge articles here.

I’m feeling bittersweet about closing this chapter of my life. I’ve made some lovely friends thanks to this challenge. In particular the fabulous Deanna Miller who became my long distance workout buddy, cheerleader and confidant.

My family’s life was changed by this challenge. We always ate well (our meals at home at least), but we weren’t getting the physical activity that we needed. Now our family is living life with the motto: Go Play Outside!

Bean has been “Little Miss Picky” for years. If we tried to get her to eat a new food she would burst into tears and say “I’m scared.” Now she is trying new foods and realizing she may not like everything but the worst thing that can happen is that she doesn’t like it and she doesn’t eat anymore.

We also learned through the challenge that Bean was afraid to eat foods if they were all mixed together, but if we deconstructed them and served each ingredient separately she was more than happy to give each food a try.  Here is an article I wrote about it for Today’s Parent.

This is Tortellini and Bean Soup that The Hubs and I ate:

And this is how Bean ate it:

Turtle is eating things that Bean never ate at this age. I’ve always made homemade baby food for the kids. When Bean was 11 months old she was eating different mixtures of homemade purees. Turtle at 11 months… is eating what we eat. We will give him a plate very similar to the plate that you see in the picture with Bean above and he feeds himself and gobbles down every last bite.

The hubs weighs less than he weighed when he graduated from High School… all thanks to not partaking in the cookies, cake and ice cream on the snack room table at work and eating his healthy snacks instead.

And me… well I lost the fear and I’m losing the weight. This post about not letting my fear hold me back from being active was my big “Ah ha moment”. I had another one of those moments at Strength Training class last Friday when I looked in the studio mirror at myself and my classmates and realized that not only did I look like I belonged but I also felt like I belonged.

This morning I stepped on the scale in anticipation of doing this article and did a double take when the scale said I was down 20 pounds from when I started the Healthy Family Challenge. That also happens to be 20 pounds down from my PRE-Baby weight with both kids. Yep not my post baby weight but my pre-baby weight. It’s a number that I haven’t seen on the scale for a very long time, but I still have a long road ahead of me.

I’ve had people ask me what my secret is to losing the weight. There is no secret. It’s hard work. It didn’t come off over night, I’ve been working on it since January. I do have 3 mottos that I am living my life by now though. You can read them in my post today on Today’s Parent.

I plan on continue chronicling my journey to be healthy and active here on Sew Creative. I hope that you will join me. If you too are taking this journey or would like to start your journey to a healthier lifestyle I would love for you to join me and share your story.

Last but not least a big thank you to Nadine and Laura at Today’s Parent. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity ladies. Thank you so much for inviting my family to participate.