Health/Wellness Thread: November

[elephantastic]

Anyone interested in a monthly thread about healthy eating, habits and exercise?

We are almost in November so that’s where I started.

Post your healthy eats (I know we are all mostly in nausea hell but some of us might start to feel better soon), work outs or other things you are doing for both physical and mental health.

[elephantastic]

Right now with eating I’m just trying to survive. I’m trying not to buy crap at the store though.

My favorite snacks right now for in between meals is fresh fruit (grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe and pineapple) and trail mix (target has big canisters, Costco too).

I’m generally a pretty active person when it comes to exercise. I don’t have a gym membership and I live in the tropics so exercising outside isn’t always an option. I do have a treadmill and I love my work out dvds. I like to do a workout DVD which is primarily strength training (Jillian Michaels dvds are my favorite and I think I have almost every one of them) 4 days per week and the other 3 I do the treadmill or a brisk walk/bike ride. I find that working out daily for 20-30 minutes helps keep me in a daily routine and I’m less likely to push my workouts til the next day because I can’t. And if I do miss a day it’s not the end of the world because in general I’m doing something daily.

I will probably do Jillian DVDs til I’m about 14 weeks and then will switch to my prenatal stuff because I’ll try to stay off my back. I love Suzanne Bowen’s prenatal Barre workouts- I did them til I delivered with E and got them on amazon.

[sammysam]

I was in a health and fitness study during my pregnancy with DD. They emphasized dairy (as much as you can tollerate) and lean protein (hummus was a big one). They also wanted us to aim for 10 000 steps a day.

I'm doing my best to follow that. I'm only 5 weeks so the nausea hasn't really kicked in yet so dairy and hummus are still easy to stomach. And I'm chasing DD around everywhere so I'm feeling ok about exercise.

But I need to up my water intake.

I was so so sick with DD that weight gain was really just the baby so I'm hoping I can stick close to those numbers again. The already loss of appetite is helping.

I'm being super careful about not over exerting myself and not eating any junk because I am so so wanting this baby to come home with us. Being celiac helps with the junk cravings since most things I want I can't eat anyways.

[sammysam]

+1 to the fresh fruit. Peaches and plums got me through my first pregnancy.

[bonzo]

I have been very bad with my eating. Normally I’m really good at eating healthily, mostly unprocessed foods, etc. but I’m in survival mode and I’ll eat pretty much anything that I can tolerate. I’ve been eating way too much pasta lately, but it tastes good and doesn’t make me sick. I’m trying to get better about at least adding vegetables to the pasta.

I had also been doing really well with exercise until nausea! I was going to yoga 3 times a week, and walking a 3 mike loop most other days. Right now, I’ve shortened my walk so it’s only about a 1.5 mile loop, and I can do it about twice a week. Forward folds and downward dogs were making me queasy, so I’m currently only going to the prenatal yoga class once a week. And I only started that after my ultrasound, so this will only be my second week in that class.

[elephantastic]

bonzo One thing that has helped me with veggies is if my H makes them. I can’t do much cooking at all lately but last week one night he roasted broccoli and green beans in the oven (kitchen window open, LoL) and another night he did broccoli and carrots on the grill. I can do salad too but someone has to make it. It’s hard because we usually eat a salad with EVERY dinner that I make. But my H doesn’t like to make them (too much time to chop everything up I think LoL) so I haven’t even bought the fresh stuff to do it because I don’t want it to go bad. The veggies that we make are typically from frozen so if we don’t eat them for some reason they don’t go bad.

ETA also I’ve had some bad nausea days where I felt seasick and there was no way I could do a Jillian video with all of the movement. Those days I still got on the treadmill and bumped up the incline and I could tolerate that pretty well.

[mamabear02]

I've been trying to make it to my normal gym classes, but that was before nausea hit. I'll probably take it one day at a time and hopefully get back into it once the nausea for a away. I've been having a hard time with foods because any type of movement and standing makes me feel worse currently - so anything that takes time to prepare (like anything healthy) is rough.

[bearfootzcontinued]

I am seriously overweight and I know that I need to be mindful of my diet so appreciate this thread. I find that I fill up faster but want to eat more often.

As for beverages, I still have one cup of coffee in the morning (a small cup vs. my huge travel mug), decaf green tea and lots of water. Sometimes I do have some ginger ale - like last night when I wanted to pretend that I was having a cocktail.

I'm trying to stick to whole grains, and I've been craving fresh fruit. But I have lots of room for improvement.

As for exercise, since I wasn't in a routine before I figured I should start slow and have just been trying to increase my walking, especially when I feel stressed.

[bonzo]

One thing that’s extra tricky for me with veggies is that I have a brassica intolerance. I can’t eat broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, etc without having intense stomach pain. There are still plenty of delicious things I can eat, but a lot of the easy prepackaged salads or stir frys come with things I can’t eat. So it’s just more prep, which I can’t do right now. And H has been working late a lot. So it’s been a lot of frozen green beans, since those are easy and pretty much zero prep.

I normally do a lot of farmer’s market shopping in the summer, and we grow a good garden, so we’re also in that transition of seasons. The farmer’s market just closed, so it’s getting back to the regular grocery store. Changing the routine while feeling lousy, it’s not fun!

I do try to make sure I get fruit during the day, like a banana or applesauce. I haven’t found the texture of most fresh fruits appealing, though I really want persimmon so I’ll try to see if I can find any at the grocery store!