THMing Family Style

The Standard American Diet (SAD) makes me sad

After two months of being a Trim Healthy Mama, learning the basics and seeing good changes in me, I think it's time to set my sights on my entire family.  When I make dinner, I personally eat a higher fat S meal or a higher carb E meal, but that doesn't mean that my family joins me in my endeavors.

An example:  Last week I made tacos.  I ate taco meat on a bed of lettuce with cheese, sour cream and salsa while my family eats theirs on white tortillas or nacho chips.  Or I serve beef stir fry and eat it over Konjac noodles (noodles that are calorie, fat and carb free) while my family eats theirs over white rice (because someone in my family doesn't like brown rice, and no, it's not the kids).

But I'm not really happy with the idea of my family eating yuck when I know how much better it would be for them to eat better.  I know it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it doesn't matter if the kids eat junk now because they have a high metabolism and will just burn it off.  Yet, then there is the reality.  What kids eat now sets them up for the future.  If they eat junk now, they will grow up conditioned to eat that way.  Once their body stops growing and their metabolism slows down, they will be fighting their weight.

Unless they learn to enjoy healthier food now.  Unless they learn a better way of eating now.  Unless they develop a taste for vegetables, whole grains, healthier meat choices, healthy fats.  Brown rice or quinoa over white rice.  Whole grain bread or Ezekiel bread over fluffy, white bread (as they call it in our house).  Cheese sticks and raw veggies over pretzels and crackers.

I grew up hating pretty much all vegetables.  Most fruits.  Anything that smacked of whole grains.  I craved sugar, and in large doses.  It took quite a few years for me to learn to adjust my diet to something a little closer to healthy.  It took years into my marriage for me to learn to eat a wide assortment of vegetables.  I still don't like a lot of fruit, but I'm okay with that.  I had to talk myself into ditching the fluff bread in favor of the brick bread.  Sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes.  I just kept eating those sweet potatoes until one day I liked them and now think white potatoes are flavorless yuck.

I want better for my kids.  I want them to reach adulthood with a healthy dietary foundation that sets them up for a lifetime of leanness.  Not skinniness, because the Lord knows that with their bone structures, that is never going to happen.  But they can have the tools they need to maintain a healthy weight.

Eating a THM diet makes me happy

Which is why I have made the decision that I need to start altering their diets to more closely match mine.  Not all at once, and not in everything.  But easier switches that they will hopefully not notice--corn tortillas or taco shells instead of white flour tortillas.  (Less calories, fat, and carbs)  Leaner cuts of meat (I learned to rinse my ground beef under hot water which transforms fattier ground beef into extra lean) like ground turkey and white meat cuts of chicken (fish allergies preclude becoming a fish-eating family).  Vegetables and more vegetables.  Less starchy fruits (ditch the bananas and push the berries and apples).  Better snack options (cutting way back on the pretzels and crackers in favor of cheese sticks, raw veggies, seeds and berries).

This is my summer project:  To transform my family's diet to one that more closely conforms to the THM way of eating.  To stop making "everyone else but me" side dishes with dinner.  To ignore the groans and whining when I make brown rice instead of white.  Eventually they will learn to enjoy the healthier forms of their favorite foods.