Healthy Living - Baby Steps

As I have learned from Biggest Loser, getting and staying healthy requires a permanent lifestyle change.  If you have already made this change in your life, I applaud you, and would love to hear your comments on what you are doing to continue this change.  If not, I hope you will join me in this series as I show you some of the changes we have made in our lives and more that we hope to make.

Dave Ramsey recommends "baby-steps" in his books on financial freedom and Fly Lady has a "baby-step" program to becoming more organized & neat.  Change is never easy, but baby-steps can be.  If you look at where you want to be compared with where you are today, it can be overwhelming.  If you just look at the first step the entire task doesn't look so daunting.  Over the course of the past year we have taken many small steps towards eating and living healthier.  We have many steps left to take, but I feel we have come a long ways.  You don't have to do your baby-steps in any particular order.  Start with something important to you or that really needs to change and go from there.  I didn't lay out a plan or even have a final end in mind, I just add each change as I think I am able.  I talk to people, read blogs, read books, and search the internet. 

When I first decided to make a change in our lives it was primarily to save money on our food budget each month.  So my first step was to make all of my own bread.  I started out small, making a loaf here and there.  For the first several weeks I was just trying to get good at making it, finding a recipe everyone liked, and adjusting my kids to eating homemade bread because the texture is so different from store bread.  I gradually reduced the amount of bread I was buying until I was making all of it myself. 

Making my own bread was important for two reasons.  First, I could save a lot of money and second, I knew bread would be healthier made fresh, at home, from ingredients I can pronounce.  I now make about 2 loaves a week and I make it all on one day.

After several months of eating nothing but homemade bread, I bought a loaf at the store one day.  As I placed the loaf in my cart, my middle son exclaimed, "Look mom - that bread comes already cut!"  I think now about how far we have come since that first "baby-step".