Journey to Excellence

On my personal blog I have been posting about the changes we have been making to our eating habits. (If you are visiting from there today, welcome!) Changes were definitely needed, but especially for Brynne. All of the members of our family are tall, thin and lanky. We have never had to watch what we eat. We've tried to keep it on the healthy(er) side, but it was a no-stress situation. But Brynne is built different than the other kids in that she is shorter, stockier, and more broad across her chest. Over the past couple of years she has gained weight consistently and especially in her stomach and chest. Part of the problem is a lactose intolerance. She has also shown some signs of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I did a lot of research and made some slight changes. Two big ones were putting her back on her lactose free dairy products and eliminating IBS trigger foods (minimal red meats, no artificial sweeteners, very limited insoluble fiber). I could see some changes, especially wit...

Our study on The Human Body is coming to a close, and we are ending it with a study on Nutrition . It has come at the most perfect time. We have been having some "chunkey monkey" issues with our littlest one and using this opportunity to learn about healthy food choices will be very beneficial to her. Brynne and I have been discussing healthy food choices versus non-healthy food choices. We have discussed that eating treats are okay, as long as they do not tip the balance of the Food Pyramid. We read the book Showdown at the Food Pyramid , that demonstrated this perfectly in a cute story! We have referred back to it many times this weekend. Brynne made a large Food Pyramid by cutting out pictures of people exercising, and different foods from the food groups (notice that she put Goldfish crackers in the milk category because they have "cheese" in them). We used the USDA My Pyramid for Kids site to learn about the Food Pyramid. She played the game Blas...