My father in law had heart surgery this morning. It wasn’t supposed to be until Wednesday, but his chest pains were getting more frequent and intense. Turns out he wouldn’t have made to Wednesday. He had two blocked arteries. One was 90% clogged and the other 99%. He now has two titanium stints living in his heart.
When you look at Bill, you’d never suspect he had heart disease or was even at risk for it. He is the healthiest 67 year old man I know. Bill does everything right… eats a healthy diet, exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, and leads a low-stress life. None of those things made him immune to heart disease, though. Genetics and childhood habits got the best of his heart.
This situation was a big wake-up call for my family over the last week. We lead a relatively healthy lifestyle, but there is definitely room for improvement. We are incredibly active and work out regularly, but if I am totally honest, we’ve become lackadaisical in some of our food choices. With two young kids in the house, it is so easy to take short-cuts for the sake of convenience, price, and happy little tummies. But what good is that doing our bodies in the long run? Not to mention, with genetics working against us on both my side of the family and my husband’s, we really shouldn’t be messing around. Andrew and I need to teach our kids healthy eating habits, adjust their palettes to healthy flavors, and help them develop a consistently healthy lifestyle so they can appreciate and live these healthy behaviors for themselves as they grow older.
As the domestic diva of our household, I’m transitioning our house into “clean eating.” This is a term I learned recently from my friend Shannon Miller who recently presented at my MOPS group. Clean eating is basically just eating that which comes naturally from the earth: fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean meats. I won’t overhaul our entire diet. That’s too overwhelming. Instead, I’m making small changes to incorporate more fresh fruits and veggies, whole grains, and healthy fats. I’m taking our everyday diet and making it better. For example, we already eat whole wheat bread and whole wheat pasta, but we tend to eat jasmine rice (which is a white rice) and regular tortillas. We’ll just switch to brown jasmine rice and whole wheat tortillas.
We are pretty good fruit eaters in our house, but our veggie repertoire rotates between frozen peas, frozen green beans, and frozen broccoli. There is nothing wrong with steaming up some frozen greens, but I think more fresh, leafy greens and fresh colors like red and yellow bell peppers and carrots should add to the mix.
As far as healthy fats go, I am switching our fat free milk, yogurt, creamer, sour cream, etc. to regular and modifying the portions. Fat free options contain chemicals our bodies don’t recognize and store them as fat anyway, so I’d rather eat dairy with the natural fat our bodies can process. For butter, I’m not sure what I am going to do, but definitely more olive oil (a healthy, natural fat).
These are small changes I can easily make without hardly any effort. I just have to switch options, which means reaching a little further over on the shelf and a little deeper into the grocery budget. The changes are worth the extra expense, though, because they might prevent my kids from having a stint put in their heart in their 60′s. I know I can’t control what happens later in their lives, but why not control what I can? We won’t be perfect, and that’s okay, but we will be better.
