Hope you are having a good day! Kath Eats Real Food (I LOVE her blog by the way!!!) was absolutely correct when she said earlier today that Virginia is about to blow away! I DO NOT LIKE tornado season one bit! Tornadoes are my number one fear in life. Growing up in Georgia we used to have a ton of warnings/watches every year, and even had a few touch downs near our home. If you have ever been near a real tornado, you know how scary/amazing it is. The hail, the changing colors of the sky, the winds and rain, the strange noises…it’s just a terrifying display of nature. The storm we are in now is supposed to pass tonight, and luckily there are no anticipated touch downs in Williamsburg. I just want it to end! I thank God that no one I know has ever been harmed by one, and I hope it stays that way!

(Source, this is a tornado that hit Atlanta a few years ago..JEEPERS!!!!)

What with the storm and all I didn’t really feel like doing one of my typical posts with a recipe today (also I’ve been attempting to study for exams all day). But I did have something else in mind (total mood shift from the stuff I was just talking about)!

I want to share with you guys some of the goals I have for the near future to improve my health (and Jason’s), and I’m hoping that posting them here will make me feel a little more accountable and give me motivation to MEET these goals! A lot of these are things I’ve struggled with doing but just keep falling off the wagon.

1. DRINK MORE WATER!!!

I used to always go by the 8 glasses a day thing but from looking online I’ve found a new guide (I’m sure many of you have heard this method before).

Take your body weight and divide it by 50% (or closer to 75% if you are active…which, alas, I am not…). Then take that number and put it in ounces. That is how much water you should be drinking every day.

So for me since I am mostly sedentary (yes it’s bad I know), I should be drinking about 57 ounces a day. How many do I get now? Anywhere from 4 to 40.

(Source)

I got one of these for free which has been helping me drink more water, sort of…but I’ve got to do better.

2. MAKE VEGGIES AT EVERY DINNER

I do this almost all the time, but I need to start making vegetables the center of our meals and not just the accessory that gets left on the plate beside a huge chunk of meat and carbs.

3. FIND FRUITS AND VEGGIES THAT JASON WILL EAT

My husband is picky. I have no problem saying so. Haha! I have counted 4 vegetables that he will eat without complaint. He loves broccoli, but you can only have broccoli so many times a week. He likes a few more fruits but he has his moods. Right now he loves oranges. He’s been eating two oranges a day for like 3 months now. I try to see this as more of a challenge than an annoyance (love you honey!), and I figure it’s good practice for later because kids are often picky eaters. I want him to be healthy because I want us to live equally long lives and I want our kids to have two healthy parents.

4. LIMIT DAIRY

You may know that I gave up dairy for Lent because I have a sensitivity to it, but I’ve decided to continue even past Easter. I know you can take Lactaid and other meds to eat dairy and not have the intolerance symptoms, but that just doesn’t seem like a good way to live. Aside from not eating cheese, avoiding dairy actually hasn’t been as hard as it would seem.

5. TAKE SUPPLEMENTS

My grandmother, who just passed away a few months ago, was a huge proponent of health foods and supplements. She was always STOCKED on all sorts of herbs and supplements that she had read about to improve her health and quality of living. I learned from her that its important that you choose the right kind of supplement. Most of the ones carried in grocery stores won’t even be absorbed and you’ll just urinate out all of the vitamins. Not helpful! I started taking a Nature’s Way multivitamin for women, but I wanted to add a probiotic supplement to that also to improve digestive health. I’ll update on how that goes!

Sorry this was such a wordy one, I do have an English degree after all! Tomorrow will be much more enticing, I promise.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren