A healthy outside starts from the inside.  ~Robert Urich

Mom & dad at Dad's Christmas Party 2006

My family is certainly not the epitome of good health and we are certainly not the poster children for great physical shape.  Do we try? Sure sometimes.  Like most people, we fall off the wagon and try to get back on, the endless cycle.  Recently we’ve noticed that Kyle’s eating and physical activity needs to be addressed, and fast.  He is like most kids who sit and play video games, probably more hours than I care to image.  It’s true I still take him to swimming lessons once a week for 45 minutes and on the weekends we take the dogs for hikes through the woods, lasting at least a good hour and a half, sometimes more.  Depending on the weather, Kyle will snowboard with me, weather permitting, or we ride quads, kick the ball around in the yard and so worth.

Nicole, me, mom and Ellen Myers c. 1985 Sacred Heart Walk-A-Thon

However, I am also aware that a good diet mostly consists of eating correctly.  Not to say we eat horrible, well sometimes, but mostly we have no boundaries with portion control.  Yep, instead of eating a serving of meat, we eat a pound of meat.  Granted, like I’ve said before, it not bad food, just too much.  I will also give my family credit, we eat a lot of home grown veggies, deer meat (Hunting – Survival or Sport?), and fruit off the trees.  Plus dad is a regular at the fruit stand, of course, sometimes those visits will end you up in the ER. (Pudd’in vs. Dad vs. Kiwis)  Regardless, the effort is still there.

When you have issues with portion control there are a number of tricks and method you should use.  Example, count every bit and every time you chew, making the food last longer.  Whatever!  I would fall asleep if I had to do that.  Another, illusion is to use a smaller plate to allow a lot less on your dish, while appearing like there’s a ton of food.  It’s not really my eyes that’s the enemy, it’s my stomach, which never seems to be happy.  I do eat a lot of food, always have.  But alas in my age bracket, I realize it’s not working out for me anymore.  I will digress for a moment.  My sister and I were traveling and we had a pretty full day booked.  Nicole said to me, “You better make sure you have something to eat so I don’t have to hear you be cranky the entire time!”  That was a classic!  Ahh, I guess my sister knows me pretty well.  That comment resulted in my face retracting into a big old smile.  But it’s true, I can’t go for hours and hours without grub.  I get headaches and I actually start feeling nauseous.

Sacred Heart Walk-A-Thon at Westmoreland County Fair Grounds

Now don’t mistake me for a health nut or a fitness expert.  By all means, I do try to eat right and exercise, but I’m not a radical by all means.  I believe in a well balanced died without foreign additives, you know the synthetic stuff added to food as a preservative, or in lieu of sugar.  The words I can never pronounce.  Yep!  That stuff.  If it’s not from nature, then I tend to steer clear of it.

Bringing me back to my family.  Mom started to institute the rule of eating dinner at the table and not in front of the boob tube.  We used to always  eat at the table growing up, just like a family should.  I couldn’t actually remember when we stopped and mom brought up a good point the other day.  We stopped eating together at the table when Nicole, Ryan and myself hit high school.  That’s when we got jobs and stayed after school for extra activities and practices.  Not to mention both of my parents worked, coming home later.

Since mom’s re-institution of the ‘eating at the table’ rule, we have gone back to the bad habit of grabbing a plate and eating in front of the computer, TV, etc.  At least I will have to admit, we do eat together, meaning the same time, just not in the same place, unless it’s in front of the TV.  But we’re getting closer…

Without meaning to promote specific apps I have two I would like to share, if anyone is interested.  The first is called Run Keeper.  I love this app.  It geo tracks your activity.  I love it because you can select running, hiking, walking and even snowboarding.  The app allows you to see your path on a map, track the elevation, time and calories. There is a function to share on Twitter and Facebook, which I sometimes do, but not required.  You can also set up groups, and watch each other, which I don’t do either, since I don’t like anyone knowing my locations, just playing it safe.  Kyle has this on his phone too, except we found out that once we are walking in the woods, his ipod looses wifi, and since he needs to be connected to wifi, it stops recording his progress.  However, since I have my iphone it uses 3G and I’m good to go.

The second is My Fitness Pal.  This a great tool to help with understanding what has been eaten. It also helps with proper planning of food and portion control.  There are great graphs on your progress for exercise, weight, and measurements.  This app recognizes most food items, actually I have been impressed by the data of food information stored in this app.  Plus what makes it easy, you can simply scan bar codes to get record exact nutritional information.  This helps to realize your weak areas, such as too much fat, or carbs, or sugar in one day, all pertinent content worth reviewing.  Of course with anything, it’s not going to record the data on its own, you have to be diligent and consistently and realistically add your activity and consumption.  Again, you can invite people to create your own personal message board to encourage one another and post your results to Twitter and Facebook.

Both of these apps are available on the iphone and the android. Plus you can enter and review your information online.  Please note, there are many many many more apps out there, I’m not saying these are the best, but they are the ones I personally use and like.  Not to mention they are FREE!