a health nut wannabe

Lately both Tim and I have become obsessed with revising our diet and exercise habits, which, I am finding, are hard to shake.

After months of literally eating for two, I am now working abruptly on scaling down the amount of calories I take in and upping the calories I exert. I am not one who has ever exercised regularly, but I am trying to get some stretching and walking in each day. To this, I will soon add a gym membership which translates to working out two or three times a week. Full disclosure: to fall within the normal limits for a person my age and size according to the Body Mass Index, I need to lose 25 lbs. That is my goal in the next few months. But mostly, I just want to exercise more because I know it's good for me and because some day when my body is used to the routine, it will feel good.

I am also trying to transition our whole family into eating more vegetarian and vegan food and have decided to personally go back to eating only poultry and fish. I haven't been eating beef for a few years, but pork somehow crept its way into my diet during the last weeks of my pregnancy. This morning I bought a new cook book, Vegan with a Vengeance for more inspiration. I am very excited to try out some of the recipes.

I must say that we have been very good at eating mostly organic food for the last couple of years. This is important to me not just because of our health, but because I want my actions to reflect my concern for the wellbeing of our planet.

The other things I want to cut down are sugar, dairy, and processed and refined foods. I would like to up our whole grains and raw foods intake.

I am now reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which is encouraging me to make these changes.

The hardest part of persevering with eating healthily (is that a word?) is to stay inspired in the kitchen, which can be hard at times since we usually eat at home all but on restaurant night, which tends to be just once a week on a random night. I tend to have stretches when I think cooking and trying out new recipes is fun, followed by stretches when I detest everything about the kitchen, including the dishes (poor Tim!). Lately I have been making most of the dinners, but when I go back to work, Tim will cook at least three times a week - the way it was before.

I will keep you posted on how our conversion is going.