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School lunch: Healthy & satisfying
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Editor’s Note: Susan McCreath has been selected to participate in the Year of You, a fitness challenge hosted by The Manteca Bulletin and CORE Athletic Performance. McCreath is keeping a weekly journal, highlighting the strides and struggles of her fitness journey. These are her thoughts and feelings shared with you.

 

Day 284

I had the school lunch today and not only was it amazingly delicious, it was healthy and satisfying. It was a teriyaki chicken wrap with many fruit and salad bar options. It is so great to see the children being given healthy options and I really think that as an adult they need to see us eating these types of food on a regular basis.  I heard there are some nutrition education classes for parents and that is something I am definitely going to look into for our school.

 

Day 285

My school is one of many in the district that is participating in the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. One of the first tasks was to complete a self review of your campus by answering tons of questions and then adding some items to a school-wide action plan. The first item I added to our school-wide action plan was forming a committee at our site to tackle our action plan. One of the areas I am really looking at changing at our site is taking away recess time as a consequence of negative behavior. I truly believe that being physically active during the day helps to keep children alert and ready to learn.

 

Day 286

Every Wednesday morning we have staff meetings at my site. Sometimes we have food, sometimes we don’t. This morning though as I walked into the room a teacher asked me, “Where are the doughnuts?” It felt good to smile and reply, “Oh, you know I won’t bring those anymore!” However, I do have a candy dish and a M&M dispenser in my office that are for staff members. Am I contradicting myself? There is a fine line between keeping staff happy with a small piece of chocolate and aiding in their unhealthy habits.

 

Day 287

Since being off of medication for a week I am feeling pretty good. I have been checking my blood pressure periodically and even had one of the district nurses take it today. My numbers have been borderline for this past week, which ultimately tells me that I need to stay the course with my eating and really get back on that exercise plan. I have no room in my blood pressure readings to go backwards in this journey.

 

Day 288

Halloween! I did really, really well today considering there was crappy food, sweets, and candy everywhere and it was cold and rainy outside. I did have a piece or two of candy, but felt that I was able to mange and control my eating; so much improvement from a year ago Halloween when I would devour handful after handful of candy. And all that leftover candy is going straight to work. Once again, though, is that the right thing to do?

 

Day 289

There was a post today online that said, “There are 168 hours in a week, 40 at work or school, 56 sleeping, 72 left over ... are you seriously saying you can’t find 3 hours a week to go workout!” Wow, this makes you self reflect and feel like crap. However, in my self reflection I would say my week looks more like this:  70 hours a week at work, 42 sleeping ... OK, I get it. Yes, it seems like I should have lots of spare time, but in reality it seems like I don’t. Heck, I didn’t even watch one pitch of the World Series!

 

Day 290

My son, whom I have not seen since January, is flying into town tonight. I am super excited to see him, but also wondering if he will even notice my weight loss. Or, will it be one of those things that he will not even notice or not even care? It always seems that we are more preoccupied with our weight than anyone else cares to know!