Exercise

January 19, 2010 – Day 19

Since taking on the “Superfoods 365” challenge on January 1st, I’ve had no problem meeting my goal of adding five superfoods to my diet each day. I had some difficulty leaving behind the Christmas indulgence mentality during the first few days of January but I still included my five superfoods on those days. Today is the 19th day in to the Superfoods challenge and I’m finding that a wonderful thing is happening – I’m becoming more “aware” of what I’m actually putting into my body with every bite of food I eat. And as I continue to learn more about the benefits of superfoods, I’m finding that I want to include more than five superfoods in my diet each day and some days the majority of the food I eat in a day is a superfood – or at least a healthier choice than I otherwise would have made in the past. I find our movie/snack night on Saturday to be the most difficult time of the week for me, as far as knowing what to serve, because my old familiar snacks are junk but I’ll continue to look for healthier snack ideas.

My cousin Claudette recently sent me a movie called Food Inc. which I watched in fascination and shock and it has inspired me to include more natural foods in my diet as well. My stepdad, Ross, returned a call I made to his wife Marg yesterday; he told me he can get me some chickens and eggs from the Hutterite Colony out by Westlock and he may know someone who sells buffalo from a farm somewhere out that way as well. Come summer, I’ll be looking for farm fresh honey, flax seeds, farm-grown vegetables and fruit from B.C. as well.

I’ve always known that healthy food is good for you, that you can live a longer life if you’re in good health, and enjoy a better quality of life for the years you have, but somehow I just didn’t “get it”. However, something has finally “clicked” and now I know that I’d rather be the healthiest I can be and cure myself (blood pressure, cholesterol) with healthy food rather than synthetic medicines, which only mask the problem.

Although I’m not always as excited about exercise as I am about superfoods, I’m still persuading myself to go for a bike “ride” at least three times a week (although I got lazy over Christmas). Since I started riding my bike again in November, tonight was one of the few times that I actually craved that burst of energy, an exercise “high” that I get when I ride. I rode for 40 minutes, “went” 8.6 kms and burned 536.4 calories.