Focus on Health

Despite all the anxieties I'm having about the financial implications of being a stay at home dad, I am absolutely geeked (Apparently, according to google, geeked is not a word.  Bah!  I'm using it anyway) about getting back in shape.

I've always wanted six pack abs.  The closest I got was a four pack and a small pooch.  One friend of mine claimed that he had a six pack; it was just hidden underneath a bag of chips.  Another friend of mine said he didn't have a stomach.  He had a liquid grain storage facility.  (Um, Beer.  Just to clarify)

I worked my tail off to get that four pack.  I logged all of my food intake on Livestrong.com, worked out faithfully four days a week, and stayed off the beer and pizza.  In six weeks I went from weighing 180 to 165.  Yes, I'm not a very big person.  I'm five foot nine but I have a very small frame.  You know, it's a Filipino thing.

I had never in my life felt so good.  I was ready to conquer the world. I felt as if, physically, there wasn't a thing I couldn't do.

The mental benefits were also awesome.  I can't explain it, but when you're in great shape, your outlook on the world is just a little bit rosier.

Another benefit to being in great shape is it got me totally off of my caffeine dependancy.  No more Starbucks, no more Monster drinks.  It......felt......awesome.

Then.......the family went to Disney World.  There I found the Epcot Center.  Inside the Epcot Center I found an all you can eat German restaurant called the Biergarten; and I proceeded to eat and drink myself stupid.

I never knew red cabbage could taste so good.  When I ordered a beer the waitress asked if I wanted a small or large beer.  Thinking in American terms (16 or 20 oz.) I thought, heck, let's go for the big beer.  I wasn't expecting big to be a one liter stein......Oh, crap.

I couldn't even pronounce half of what I was eating; and after slamming down a liter of beer I can't say that I even really knew what was in I was eating either.  I just knew it was damn good and I went totally nuts.

Let me tell you.....German food is heavy.  Very heavy.  Lotsa potatoes, folks.

After it was all said and done I couldn't ever remember feeling more miserable.  Unbelievably, Toby, who had kept up with me for quite a while, had the audacity to ask, "Dad, you wanna go ride the test track?"

Now Toby knows better, I suffer from motion sickness, add to the fact that I was lit up from drinking too much beer (yes, I'm a light weight) I answered with an emphatic, "Oh, Hell no."

So, getting back to getting healthy.  This is where the downward spiral began.  One thing about hitting the restaurants is, once you start eating out on a regular basis, it's a difficult habit to break.  And we ate out everywhere on vacation, then it never really stopped when we came home.

I went from 165 two years ago up to 185 now.

Ok, I know. I can hear it now.  185?  Quite crying, you a-hole.

But, I don't feel good at 185.  It's time to shave about fifteen pounds off this frame.  After that, work on the six pack.

With the family life being as frantic as it is eating out is the quick and easy way to get by.  The worst of all the eating out months is June.  That's when Toby is playing competitive baseball and Tera is playing competitive softball.

There are no weekends off in June; there is always a ball tournament somewhere.  Add practices and league games during the week and you have no time for grocery shopping.

During the month of June Karla calculated that the family had spent over four hundred dollars on fast food and sit down restuarants.......Ouch.

This is a figure that makes me cringe.  My kids are thirteen and eight, and what am I teaching them about eating healthy?  Not a damn thing.

Fortunately, Toby has always been a fairly good eater.  He's not a big junk food kid and, like his dad, he's been blessed with a high metabolism.  But he does have two vices that Karla and I have to keep an eye on.  He loves pop and has a weakness for little Debbie Cakes.

Tera's eating habits, on the other had, are absolutely atrocious.  She is our junk food junkie.  As an example, let's go with Halloween.

When Toby went trick or treating, he would come home with a large sack, dump it out, take the suckers and bubble gum, and then proceed to sell the rest.  This is when I learned that taking your candy to school in order to turn a profit is completely unacceptable.  I had no idea Toby was even doing that.  So guess who ended up buying up all the chocolate?  Dear ol' dad.  But we will talk about the chocoholic later.

With Tera, the bag wouldn't even hit the floor before she was already digging out of it.  Empty wrappers start hitting the ground at a fast and furious pace.  Yes, little girl had hit the lottery.

So Karla and I were forced to put all of Tera's candy away and to ration it out to her.  Otherwise she would sit in front of the TV and eat herself sick.

Now Tera comes by it naturally.  Her dad is a serious chocoholic.  It's bad enough that when Karla buys chocolate, say a bag of snickers fun bites, she has to hide it, other wise Tera and I will knock it out in half a day.

So getting healthy is not just a concern for myself.  I really worry about Tera.  From the minute she gets home from school until she goes to bed, if we let her, she will just graze all afternoon and into the evening.  She is the reason that when I take over the grocery shopping that the junk/processed foods will be held to an absolute minimum.  She seriously has no concept of what eating healthy means, and that is my fault.  As a parent I did her a great disservice.

I'm not looking forward to the withdrawals.  I think out of the whole family Tera will take it the hardest.  But it has to be done.

Fortunately, early on, the grocery shopping will be a meat free adventure.  Karla and I have reached out to the locals in our community for our beef (Thank you, Ladina) and our pork (thank you, again, Ladina)  We have found farm fresh eggs (thanks, Karyn) and occasionally we plan to splurge on free range chicken (Thank you Dan and Hailey).

The freezer will be stocked.  We shall see how long it lasts.

Now, financially, I know that this could be a more expensive proposition.  However, the one piece of mind I get from this is that I know exactly where my meat is coming from and I know how it's been raised.

I once had the fortune (or misfortune, depending on your take on things) of watching a film called Food, Inc.  In the movie I got a good look at how our big corporations are raising our livestock and preparing it for the market place.  It absolutely turned my stomach.

The next time I hear someone scream about how cruel hunting is and then turn around and eat a hamburger or buy chicken nuggets from the store I will have to resist the temptation to smack the living crap out of them.

At least the bird I shot was free and had a chance to live.  It wasn't cooped up, unable to move in an overcrowded pen, standing in it's own feces......But, I digress.  Live and let live, right?

Come spring I will plant a garden and look into canning everything I grow. To be honest, it doesn't sound fun, but if it saves on grocery money and helps us eat better, I'll do it.

Now, the exercise part won't be that bad.......for three of us.

Tera, Toby, and I, in regards to exercise, are busy bodies.  Biking, hiking, playing on the trampoline, throwing the ball around.  That's all fun stuff that we will enjoy doing, thanks to my decision to stay home.

Karla, however, is not a fan of exercise.  I've known her since I was seventeen years old and I can seriously only remember seeing her run twice.  Both times the kids were in trouble about something.

It's not that she can't be athletic.  She doesn't want to be.  Karla enjoys sitting behind a desk, going to library board meetings, being the team accountant for Tera's softball team.  Karla, in short, is a workaholic.  Her own health has always taken second fiddle.  And now that Karla and I are in our forties, that worries me.

I'm starting to see some of my friends fall victim to heart problems, diabetes, and high blood pressure.  I didn't think I would see that stuff for at least another twenty years.

I'm hoping to see Karla do a little blogging herself about her own exercise related success story as well as the rest of the family.  My biggest hope is that by reducing the stress level from all the running around we can come out of this a much healthier, and happier family.  Both mentally and physically.

Only time will tell.