My Desire to Have Another Baby Changed My Eating Lifestyle for the Better

A big topic of discussion in my family has been eating healthier. My husband grew up eating frozen dinners that had been thrown in a microwave while I grew up eating a bit healthier, being a vegetarian for 9 years. While I was pregnant with our son I gained a lot of weight and ended my vegetarianism due to medical needs. Since then my husband and I have moved 4 times and he has completed two years at school, moved on from a retail job to one he is very happy with. The stress of the years has caught up to us, however, in the form of added weight.

So when I brought up having another child sometime soon, we both started to take a look at our health. My husband won't admit it, but he looks fine. I on the other hand am medically obese. Losing weight before having another baby is very important to me because obese women suffer higher risk pregnancies. We decided that to feel comfortable with bringing another child into the world, and to give our son the best life possible, we needed to get in shape.

Since exercise really isn't the problem in our lives, we had to look at what we eat. One of the things my doctor told me is that exercise only makes up 20% of weight loss with the rest being comprised of what a person eats. It took me a minute to wrap my mind around food being such a big issue for me. I knew that I had a problem with some junk foods, not many... but some, and my biggest calorie intake came in the form of one tasty, evil liquid: fruit juice. I am a juice-a-holic.

So we started shopping in a way that supported our new lifestyle. My doctor suggested walking the perimeter of the grocery store while avoiding the middle aisles. This has worked well for our family. We begin with fresh fruits and salad mixes in the produce and move on to skinless chicken breasts on the back wall. After that we move on to frozen veggies and whole wheat pastas and some other healthy items. During my vegetarian years I was vegan for two of them, so I absolutely cannot stand milk, but 8^th Continent soy milk has a solid place on my grocery list.