How do you stay healthy? - Part 1

Hello peeps! To "kill" sometime between now and the next time I talk about my turbo jam progress, I want to talk about the things I do to stay healthy, maybe you can tell me what you do and we can swap some tips. 

What drove me into trying my best to stay healthy is my kids and my husband.  I don't want them to get a disease that could have been easily prevented if I would have taken the time to instill some healthy habits.  Omar (kid #2) was diagnosed with high cholesterol in 2009, he was only 11, so that scared me.  With changes in his lifestyle, he hasn't been put on medications to control it, and I am thankful for that. 

As soon my focus in nutrition and exercises shifted from "looking good" to "being healthy" I actually started to see results! I am not yo-yoing anymore, its been a steady decline  in pounds for me! maybe not as fast, but it has been cosistent.  I keep reading that loosing weight slowly is the most healthy way to do it, as it keeps you from gaining that weigt back :)

I also decided that I am not going to diet.  Its hard to stick to a diet in the long run.  So I decided to eat healthy for life!...as soon as you change that mind set, you will notice a difference, trust me.  I can't go cold turkey.  I will set up myself for failure.  Instead, I started making small changes to our meals. I eliminated unnecessary sugars, like soda.  We now only drink it at parties, or when we go out to amusement parks, but its no longer part of our daily lives.  I had to substitute with something so I went for Juice, but it has the same amount of sugar as soda (or even more)!  So I learned to read labels and made sure the Juice I buy has no more than 10 grams of sugar ( I avoid any juice that says cocktail),  and I always water down the juice! at first the kids didn't like it, but now they drink it down with out blinking!  I also eliminated all the BIG cups from our house, and I bought 8oz cups,  not only does my bottle of juice last longer it also limits the juice intake to an actual cup (every calories counts!) as the rule is "only one cup of juice with dinner, if you are thristy before of after get water"  That was the first change I made to our meals.

I'll talk about more things I changed  tomorrow (I need you to keep coming back :), for now try to stay healthy and don't beat yourself if you fell off the wagon today, just get back on it.