Now It's Personal

I haven't posted in a couple weeks, because I've just been through a round of illness at my house. One of the fun ones, where everybody is miserable and we're all kind of walking around in a fog of antihistamines and antibiotics and acetaminophen trying not to breathe on each other. Having run the washing machine solidly for the past 48 hours, and thankfully we've been able to open the windows and air out the house, I think we're all better.

But this leads me to my personal reason for really wanting to bring this project to fruition: I want my family to be healthier. I want to envelop our lives in healthy activities and foods, in such a way that the healthiest choice is also the most natural and obvious option on the menu.

It's not that my family is patently unhealthy. I'll admit to carrying around more weight than I should, so this something that I personally need. And having suffered a couple of bouts of depression, I would like to better explore the nutritional methods of managing mental illness, rather than resigning myself to daily pills to regulate my seratonin for the rest of my life. Plus, Joe's family history of heart disease requires extreme vigilance as well, to ward off a lifetime of adventures in pharmaceuticals.

So far, though, our children have gotten off to a good start. Joe and I have made every attempt to set them on a road of eating fruits and vegetables every day, drinking water and milk instead of sugar-juice or soda, and leading active lives. But still they are bombarded by bad choices, with a constant supply of sweets and nutritionally void junk foods being given to them at school and social activities.

Raising kids today, it's damn near impossible to avoid screen time, and with that comes the marketing messages. Some of that's getting better - thankfully, the junk food merchandising industry wonks have finally realized that they're effectively killing their clients, or at least realized that society doesn't hold them blameless in the effect. But it's such an uphill battle to keep kids from going down a path of destructive bad habits. And having walked down that path myself, I really want to help my girls avoid it.