Eat Right, Exercise Regularly, Die Anyway!

I came across a thread on a local mommy discussion board recently that resonated with me. The gist of the conversation revolved around this conundrum: how do you balance health and convenience and (further) how do you reconcile the seemingly contradictory health information that we face every day?

Examples:

We all know you should wear sunscreen to prevent skin cancer, right? Did you know that some research indicates that sunscreens may be bad for us...and for the environment? Plus, now we have to worry about Vitamin D deficiency if we don't get enough sun.

We all know we should eat our fruits and veggies...but do they have to be organic? or locally grown? How many of us can afford a completely organic lifestyle?

Carbs are evil...meat is murder...High Fructose Corn Syrup is from the devil (and yet in everything known to man)...keep your house clean but only use "green" products...

It makes my head spin.

Even with all of the supposed knowledge at our disposal about what's good, bad, or otherwise for our health, there are endless examples of contradictions caused by a crazy mixture of environment and genetics. There are those who drink, smoke, and eat junk food and live a long life with few health effects. Then there are those whose lives are taken far too soon. For no apparent reason other than bad luck and weird genetics. I just don't get it.

For many of the moms in the discussion, a lot seemed to boil down to convenience and cost. It's challenging to provide a healthy, organic meal that tastes good to your family night after night. I'm not saying it's impossible. People make a lot of money writing blogs and books on the topic. But have you been to Whole Paycheck (I mean Whole Foods Market)
lately? That stuff ain't cheap!

I think that, as with many things in life, it's all about balance. In my own life, I think about the changes I can make that fit my budget and my lifestyle. I make small steps towards those changes. I eat more veggies. I avoid high fructose corn syrup if I can buy an alternative brand. I buy organic if it fits my budget. I also enjoy a yummy burger on occasion and buy whatever sunscreen is on sale.

I have a friend who makes a conscious effort to feed her family as healthfully as possible when at home so that when they are "out and about" or on vacation or visiting with friends, they can be more flexible with their dining choices. Hopefully, it all balances out in the end.

Here's the really important part: life is too short to miss out on chocolate milkshakes, a fine steak, and salty thick-cut french fries. We just have to make sure those items aren't part of our daily recommended nutritional intake, right?

How do you balance nutrition, good taste, convenience, and environmental consciousness?

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9. Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole. There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them." I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known. This

The Stages of Grief: COVID Edition

It's 2020. It's almost Christmas. We're still in the middle of a pandemic. In fact, we are experiencing what appears to be an incredible surge that is exerting tremendous pressure on our healthcare and social service system. The headlines are clear: we're not done with this madness and December 31, 2020 will not magically be the "end of it". Earlier in the year, our family thought about whether we might be able to travel at this time. We thought that maybe the curve would be flat enough that we could take a few days away from home during the Christmas holidays. We realized that the pandemic would still be happening, but with the right protections and with prolific mask usage, we could get a much-needed change of scenery. During what is now (clearly) a delusional thought process, we booked a stay in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for the week of December 19th. Spoiler alert: we canceled the trip almost two weeks ago. Canceling this trip was not a tragedy. In fact, I

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen. If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life. I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into

LaineyJune 21, 2011 at 6:46 PM
We've thought a lot about this topic, too, and have the same frustrations. What's safe? According to so many watchdog organizations, NOTHING. So we make the small changes that we can afford. We don't buy organic meat, but we do buy organic milk and select fruit and veggies, and we have a kickin' garden out back that isn't sprayed with chemicals. I switched the kids to natural toothpaste. I also found that Whole Foods carries a line of shampoo and body wash that's CHEAP and devoid of the chemicals that have recently come under fire as potential carcinogens. So I guess we focus on areas that are the biggest concern for us: dairy, fruit and body care, because these items impact us most daily.
CatherineJune 21, 2011 at 10:51 PM
A long time ago when I first discovered I could no longer eat meat (it's gotten a little better I can eat chicken and fresh fish now) I came across a chart of what is worth buying organic every time, what is a when we can afford it type of thing, and it is totally not worth the money. I thought it was super awesome and regret not saving it. But in a quick search I found the article below which has a nice easy chart that is perfect to fold into the grocery list :)
http://www.learnvest.com/living-frugally/when-is-it-worth-buying-organic/
The fact is that some things may not be "certified organic" but they don't attract pests so its not as necessary to use the chemicals,which means it isn't worth the time or the money!!

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