How to Make a Healthy Resolution Happen

For teachers, there is a phenomenon from Thanksgiving to Christmas that is best titled "Survival Mode" and I suppose that's exactly where I've been. The first week I had off for holiday vacation, I succumb to a new level of sinus issues that had me giving Aurora some serious competition. Thus, I am asking for pardons in my lack of activity on this blog in the past month. This hasn't been the easiest of school years.

About this time of year, I start hearing folks share their New Year's resolutions. I'm not one to conform to traditions (the eternal teenager here), but I do like making resolutions at any ol' time of year. I'm a stubborn little Virgo and if I want to change something, I hardly have the patience to wait.

Change is a constant companion in our lives. Often we are scared of change or worry about failure, especially when it comes to resolutions. We sometimes have moments of grandiose and decide we're losing those 50 pounds this year or we're getting to the gym five times a week or training for that 10K. Then it falls short before President's Day. Why does that happen? We were gung ho and ready to go!

A plethora of articles will permeate our senses with advice and over time, I've procured my own sensible rules to making healthy resolutions. I've been on a very long road to health and for approximately nine years of that time, I had zero thyroid help. I was searching for an answer and trying a variety of health strategies to achieve optimal health. One by one, I removed habits from my life that weren't helping me. It started with zero McDonald's breakfasts before work and if I wanted ice cream, I had to go to DQ because I wouldn't allow it in the house (now I have sugar-free ice cream in the house on occasion and my children eat it all so I'm already limited!). Then I swapped out sodas for diet and traded out my AM Dr Pepper for black coffee (which now I don't drink at all). It was a step by step process. If I had done all of it at once, nothing would have come of it. I've made many more choices since I started being a health freak 11 years ago, but the point is to choose one thing and work on that before moving onto a new change. If anyone chooses too many changes to implement at once, it's often going to end up to be too much to handle.

The best resolutions are simple, measurable, and doable. A strong resolution has a contingency plan for certain circumstances so that the positive change you're implementing has a chance to grow into a habit.

Simple, Measurable, and Doable in Action
As a teacher, I hear random facts like it takes seven experiences with a new word or concept before your brain has it ingrained. I've also heard it takes 21 days to retrain our brains with a new habit. I believe that mindset helped me start the Sugar Detox diet. I started the Sugar Detox a month or so before finding my miracle thyroid doctor and I had to start somewhere because the experts I sought out had no answer or no clue as how to help me. The one quack who told me to seek out a psychiatrist fueled my anger enough to research similar stories (there had to be people like me out there!) and my research kept returning to sugar as the weakened thyroid's demon.

I figured I could try something for 21 days - that's three weeks! It's not even a full month. It's not forever and I could experiment for myself how easy or difficult the task would be and then throw it away after 21 days if I found it didn't help. I wasn't alone in my endeavor. My mother made meals for me on tutorial days (it was February/March of 2014, so the 4th Writing STAAR is at the end of every March or early April). It didn't take the full three weeks to find out that it really helped me feel better. I wasn't 100%, but I wasn't experiencing all those symptoms in all their severity. I still had them (course, when I found doc, I found out that fruit was also a demon; my body can't handle even natural sugar!)

See what I mean about resolutions don't have to wait? It was the spring of 2014 and March 2nd, I went on a Sugar Detox. We had a simple plan that we could measure. By late April/early May, I had students remarking on my weight loss (but the scale hadn't moved much, but it was showing). Because it was simple, it was doable day in and day out. Mom and I started learning how to read labels for sugar in all it's forms - glucose, high fructose corn syrup, etc.  We figured out that 3g of sugar or less per serving was our goal. One of the first meals that stood out in its simplicity was when Mom located a can of beans and white corn tortillas each with 0g of sugar and we were making cheesy quesadillas for dinner. A little PAM in the pan and we were flipping awesome.

When it's a simple plan, it's doable and we are more likely to stick with any plan that is doable. The plan was limiting sugar. We were able to measuring our meals' sugar amounts by reading labels and combining key ingredients. We were savvy in finding simple meals that we'd cook in duplicate or triplicate amounts for lunch leftovers. We had to do a bit of research and reteach ourselves what was acceptable and unacceptable, but it was very doable. The longer part was reading labels in the grocery store the first few trips and it got faster and easier after that as we memorized quality products.

A Contingency Plan: Parts A though G
As this resolution developed, I had to come up with a contingency plan. What would I eat at a given restaurant? What restaurants could I even dine at? What about work luncheons? What about when I'm traveling on the road? Who are my support system that actively assist me in maintaining my healthy eating? I came up with seven areas where I might meet up against a problem and had a ready solution for it.

Part A: Restaurants
Answering those questions required some research, too, but for the most part, I can eat at practically any restaurant. I don't care to deconstruct a hamburger because I might smell like onions the rest of the day (when I forget to ask for no onions, though I like eating onions, the scent does not leave your fingers easily), but is it a doable restaurant choice? Yes. Most restaurants have online nutritional information for their menu items, so if I know where we're heading beforehand, I'm on my phone searching for the best choices. Over time, you have certain items memorized and you learn to not look at the menu for tempting choices that may make you change your mind. You stick to your choices.

Part B: Know Universal Yes! Items
One of my top choices is always a Mexican restaurant because I can find many choices that are on my diet. For one, corn tortillas do not affect me like wheat does (yes, that means no pasta joints like Olive Garden or Italian restaurants unless they're big city because big city restaurants typically include gluten free pasta as an option). For me, it's easy to choose between enchiladas or a low-carb Padron plate smothering in melty creamy cheese. Plus, our area Mexican restaurants offer pancakes and chicken strips that make my children happy. Win-win.

Part C: Know Universal No! Items
Breaded food items are a no-go. My husband and I stopped with our girls in Fredericksberg and the menu looked like it had options (and my husband was salivating at the thought, he really likes German food) and I ordered the only non-breaded item on the menu: the only salad on the menu was chicken salad. I took a bite and was sickened. Over time, without sugar, you taste it and it makes you nauseous. Not everyone knows that some chicken salad recipes include sugar. So, basically, I didn't eat lunch. I would pay for the experience in passing out (no thanks!). I got a snack later on to hold me over as we finished out trip. There were no other items on the menu for me since it was all beer-battered items (yeast plus wheat? Just knock me out with a hammer).

We already know that pasta joints are not a option. If we want pasta, Momma or Daddy is making it at home for dinner, which is often a very popular meal in our household.

Part D: Snacks and Travel
One of the trickiest areas I've had to tackle is snacks, especially snacks for traveling. Some snacks are easy, like low-sugar yogurt, but they require refrigeration or a short-term ice pack. What about when you're traveling for a much longer period of time?

Traveling or family trips taught me a few things about on-the-go bars. I started with Atkins bars because of the low sugar. I learned, in time, that the peanut choices were giving me issue (as in a swollen thyroid issue) and then the soy in the non-peanut choices. I've since moved onto OATmega bars and Quest bars. There are a handful of NICE! bars that are made with sunflower lecithin and not soy lecithin, but I can only find them at Sprouts (i.e. another city).

Cashews and peanuts are goitrogens meaning they cause stress on the thyroid in some form or fashion (i.e. I could bather on about the science behind how they confuse your thyroid's production), but a swollen thyroid means you have a goiter. A goiter means your thyroid is over-compensating because it's still trying to do it's job, but it's limited. During these times, I had difficulty talking and swallowing (and therefore eating), and in general, it was uncomfortable. So, those items left my diet.

I'll grab the individual almond butter to-go packs from Walmart. They can go on toasted Ezekiel bread, but I've also eaten them like an astronaut would eat their meals in space - straight out of the little bag (it's portion control!). I like almonds and pistachios as a nut snack. I have to be careful because most nut mixes have sugar. Pecans and walnuts tend to have higher sugar amounts, so you just learn what is acceptable.

I traded out chips with Veggie Crisps or Wasabi Snap peas, though I sometimes still have a few potato chips. I limit potato chips more so when I'm counting carbs because it's technically not a thyroid allergen.

Bacon! I read one site where a woman would pack zip lock baggies of cooked bacon for the road. I've done it. I love it. Homemade beef jerky is also a great option since commercialized jerky has soy and sugar (and Texas has its fair share of small businesses or family/friends that just like making jerky). Once, I took cooked pieces of roasted chicken from my sister's house for my road trip and thoroughly enjoyed nibbling on the leftovers from the ziploc bag. Hey! You get creative and you save money.

Cheese sticks are one choice that over time I gave up. I prefer "real" cheese cubes from the deli because I can taste the salt cheese-sticks now (I know, it just gets more and more limiting these days), but the point is to keep trying and finding new options. It's an evolution and my children still love cheese sticks (though it doesn't prevent them from stealing my real cheese and pepperoni slices make any of us happy).

It's been a learning curve. I used to pack sliced bell pepper until I realized it was giving me some issue, too. It's a trial and error kind of thing. Over time, I've come up with an easy plan. On family day trips, I'll pack sandwiches and my sandwich is made with toasted Ezekiel bread. If you have a plan for different events, you can master any health goal.

Part E: Know Favorite Recipe Ingredients
It pays to know ingredients that go into recipes. No two recipes are ever the same. My school cafeteria's chicken salad does not have sugar in its recipe (they also follow government guidelines for fat and sugar content), but that chicken salad in Fredericksberg was loaded with sugar, so it all depends. If you know that Sesame Chicken's recipe includes an entire cup of sugar in a homemade version, you can only imagine how much will be served up in the Chinese buffet dish. Course, once I figured out soy is another of the devils attacking my weakened thyroid, we limit our trips to ethnic restaurants anyway (but you can find options for making soy-free coconut curry chicken which is so sweet and delicious).

Part F: How to Please the Masses
The contingency plan for not always denying my family members is rather simple. The girls go on a date with their daddy to a Chinese restaurant or to McDonald's on an evening when I have a school event or when I'm away for a convention. On the rare occasion that I eat sushi or Chinese, I know it can't be for several more weeks and that I need to take extra thyroid supplements (ThyroCare) that day. I'd be in bad shape if I ate it twice in one week - I did it one of my children's birthday weeks. Ouch!

Part G: A Support System
One of the most important aspects of any contingency plan is a support system. I firmly believe in the chaos theory: what could go wrong will go wrong. What do you do in those moments? Who has your back? My mother and my husband are my top support members because of their activity level. I'm sure Mom was going off instinct when she started helping me make sugar-free meals, but once my husband saw the huge difference in me once I received proper thyroid care through medicine and diet, he's been on board with meal prep and grocery shopping. When he comes home with a can of low-sugar fruit, my heart soars. He's reading labels for me? He doesn't read labels, he reads price amounts!

It means a lot when the assistant who makes copies for our grade level keeps out regular and sugar-free candy and never offers me a donut. Ms. Lois remembers my health restrictions and most people forget (and that's okay if they forget, they don't live with me day in and day out) but it means a lot when people remember. When the business office was hosting a luncheon for the rest of us, she came to me and asked if there was anything on the menu list I could eat. She was preparing me! I figured I'd have a backup lunch just in case, but it was awesome to have someone think of me like that.

If you have diet saboteurs around you, it's rather difficult to maintain any health resolutions. When it's a late day and you're exhausted and cooking just is not going to happen...you come home and find your mate has cooked a meal of spaghetti with traditional wheat noodles and garlic bread. Would you eat it? Yes. At the end of a long day, who isn't starving and who isn't going to do what they can to not hurt their mate's feelings? If your team is on board with your health choices, you'll come home to meatless spaghetti (my vegetarian Daddy) or gluten-free noodles with low-sugar spaghetti sauce (me!). There is no internal dilemma and face it, you feel loved. If your loved ones care about your health, they care about you.


As for this year, I haven't quite settled on my New Year's Resolution, though I'm thinking Stress Management is on the menu. Stress is another thyroid demon (I know! How many thyroid demons do I really need?). When I discussed with my doctor how I lose sleep thinking about work, we discussed different options and I told him that if I exercise, I sleep better because I've properly exhausted myself. Exercise is an endorphin's agent and therefore a stress management tool. I know extreme exercise causes my body more stress (so, no I can't do CrossFit or P90X or Zumba), but I can take turns with Just Dance with the girls, go for walks, weight train with a medicine ball, and race the husband down the block.

Course, when it comes to stress management, I should add in listening to music more, baths, taking a friend to get a pedicure, and getting my hair cut. Plus, who really cares if I veg out playing a video game? I'm that typical Type A personality that has to constantly remind herself it's time to put the pen down and quit worrying about work and students or my own children...and go play. The husband asking, "Do you want to go for a walk after dinner?" certainly helps.

Good luck with whatever resolution you choose to do. May it improve your health and happiness! And ask your support system to have your back!

If Looks Could Kale Caldo (trying the suspicious greens in Caldo)

It just so happens that I work at a school that grows organic vegetables and raises chickens. For Entrepreneur Day this year, the 5th/6th are hosting a farmer's market with organic vegetation (winter harvests) and free-range, organic chickens. What a fantastic fun-raiser addition! As a parent, my children have brought home classroom harvests that we've enjoyed.

It was an interesting day when a sea of 3rd graders carried beach-ball sized cabbage to dismissal for their parents to collect them. One of those children was my middle daughter. I had no clue they were involved with a gardening project, but our school has an amazing and healthy organic garden. My then 3rd grader brought home a 15 pound cabbage (not the record-holder cabbage, which weighed in at 15 lb, 9 oz). I missed the deadline for creating a dish for the feast (being a teacher means sometimes I'm a rotten mom; I just could not get a dish made because of work obligations). Luckily I was still invited to attend the harvest feast and check out dishes parents had made with cabbage and I felt less guilty about my lack of contribution because the feast was enormous! To store the beach ball for later use, it took 7 or 8 gallon size baggies to properly house the chopped cabbage. I gave several bags away to my parents and my sister and that still left us with an abundance. From that feast, a fellow teacher's husband (recruit the Daddy, I should have done that) made an enchilada cabbage casserole. Well, that gave me my first cabbage project! It's still one of my favorites and you'd think non-dieters would turn their nose up, but it's a hit at gatherings and my children (who'd thunk!?).

Often, my 6th grader best resembles The Dark Crystal's Aughra when she's carrying the world of supplies on her back. She prefers carrying her art supplies and library book in her hands. On her back is a overly-filled camping backpack (we had to go heavy duty and large-capacity) and on her arms are a gym bag, lunch bag, and a book bag for a stack of books she must carry. Just try to help her de-clutter that bag and remove the litany of books she's carrying around! This past week, my little bag lady had an addition to her load: a large bag of kale. We're talking a thin, medium size trash bag of kale.

I won't lie, I have tried kale once and thought, "Nope, don't like it." That means I haven't given it a real go. If I'm honest with myself, certain foods taste exceptional in one way, but completely disgusting in another way. Take spinach as an example. I could never stomach the cafeteria's soggy version growing up and it's alright in salads and yet I don't crave it. Then one day, I tried creamed spinach and it became one of my favorite work lunches, especially since it's a steamable veggie bag in the freezer aisle and that means zero prep on my part (save hitting buttons on the microwave). I'm certain the Parmesan and Asiago cheeses in the "creamed" part of the title is what does the trick. Many things are improved with cheese (that's how I get my children to eat cauliflower).

As the week progressed, my daughter pressed upon me the issue of a recipe assignment including the bag of kale taking up valuable real estate property in my fridge. What? I'm expected to cook it for a harvest feast. I don't even like kale! Due to having a child with poor memory who could not tell me when this dish was due, I sidled up to the science teacher at dismissal the next day and asked when the recipe and dish were due and...what do I even do? She replied, "It's great in Caldo!"

So, today, that is what I'm doing. My eldest daughter (it is her assignment, after all) and I are in the midst of making caldo. I have my medium crock pot and my largest pot put to work and we didn't even use all the bag. We've washed and cut vegetables and she wanted to put the kale in herself.

As for liking or not liking kale, I may have to talk to Sam I Am and explain a few things because I tried a leaf as I cut the greens for the If Looks Could Kale Caldo. It wasn't bitter like my first kale taste-test (then again, my first taste-test didn't come from our school's organic garden with pure chemical-free dirt; the size of our produce is astounding!).

If you are unfamiliar with the dish, Caldo is a Latin dish common to our area, but is found all over the world. Many variations exist and just like any recipe, each area will have its own unique ingredients. If you decide to google, you'll find many options to choose from: Caldo de Res (Beef Soup, which in our area, I've eaten as Oxtail soup), Caldo de Pollo (Chicken Soup), and Caldo Verde (Green Soup with kale or collard greens and sausage). That's just a few! While I am familiar with a Mexican version, the Portuguese have their national caldo, Caldo Verde and the spices and flavors have paprika and garlic spiced sausage, so the flavors are quite different than the smoky, cumin flavors that I'm familiar with.

Perhaps the best quality of caldo is the cheap and easy preparation. Every recipe lists food items often found in any kitchen and the portion you need of each item is small. My one large pot has only two potatoes and 2 corn cobs. As we cut and split the portions for the school's feast and our dinner, we watched it grow despite small handfuls of each ingredient going in. That tells me on those tight weeks or days before payday (perhaps when you went broke getting your children Christmas presents), you can look in each nook and cranny and drawer of your kitchen to put this soup together. Use that last potato in the bag that, alone, won't take care of a family of five. It's that half onion left over from another meal preparation or that one large carrot or half-used squash (happens when I'm the only one eating the vegetable on a regular basis). It's taking a can of chicken broth or a bullion cube and using leftover meat or emptying that 3 lb bag of frozen chicken that only has one large piece left. It sounds incredibly cheap (and quite possibly a leftovers mix) and fantastically easy (and I've been on a cooking boycott and this may be what ends the stalemate).

The caldo most typically found in our neck of the world includes squash and tender chicken pieces and it has a chicken-noodle soup healing feel to it. The chunks of vegetables are large and chicken is added without being cut. As it cooks (the longer the better), the chicken is so tender, it falls apart. It's colder outside lately and I really want to warm my hands around a soup bowl.

Being the cook I am, I research recipes and then do what I want. I see the common themes in each version. I know the flavors I like best and what my children will eat (the child who has the kale recipe assignment keeps remarking on the glorious smell. I know my group well and choosing the Mexican caldo spices would work. I even had herself so she could understand that fact. She inhaled a whiff of heaven...so choosing cumin was a win for us.

The recipe I'm working with includes carrots, onion, yellow squash, organic free-range chicken broth, frozen boneless skinless chicken thighs, potatoes, corn on the cob, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper...and that giant bag of kale in the fridge. Price-wise, this is a relatively cheap meal to prepare. I spent $24 on all the ingredients for two batches. I am estimating 16 servings for the stove top batch. Since some of the food I picked up were in bulk bags, like the potatoes and chicken, the full amount I spent isn't actually simmering on the stove or in the crock pot. I have enough potatoes left over for two meal sides and an extra piece of chicken. I estimate that, total, one batch costs $8.30 and one serving costs $0.52 cents.

I love crock pots so all we did was chop the vegetables into big chunks since caldo typically has large chunks of potatoes and onions and coins of carrots and squash. We put 2 potatoes, 1 yellow onion, 1 yellow squash, 2 corn cobs broken into 5 or so pieces, 2 or 3 frozen chunks of chicken thighs and 2 cups chicken broth. We trimmed the stem off about 6 leaves of organic kale for each batch and cut thin strips. We added approximately 3 or 4 tablespoons of cumin and garlic and added salt and pepper to taste. We eyeball spice amounts as a general rule.

Everything went in there at once and we set the crock pot for 4 hours on medium and the stove top simmered for about 2.5 hours before I turned off the heat altogether and let it sit. A side fact about chicken is it takes 30-60 minutes to cook frozen chicken depending on the size of the chicken pieces, so making sure it's thoroughly cook is quite important. We cook the caldo for longer because when the chicken is tender, you put a big spoon or mug into the soup to take out a serving, and the meat has separated itself and you have strings of chicken meat, it's that tender.

I love recipes where you prep and walk away until later. You don't even have to set a timer because it just gets better the longer it cooks. That's a great excuse for using the crock pot on low for the 8 to 10 hours you're at work for a day you know a cold front is blowing in. If you don't use a cover on the caldo while it simmers on the stove top, you will have to add water because of evaporation.

The verdict? Kale in caldo is mighty fine. I highly suggest it. As part of my daughter's project, she had to work on the nutritional value of one serving, which is included below. These numbers are estimates because often with caldo, you fish out what you want more of. My husband fishes out more meat while the youngest wants more broth and potatoes. Naturally, one of those bowls will have more protein while the other has more carbs and potassium. The kale and potatoes contribute considerable amounts of potassium. The kale alone put 2,227g of potassium in the entire pot. Potatoes added 1240g. When I have students in after-school sports and their little muscles ache from practice, I ask if they like bananas or avocados because they have potassium, but kale will be added to my suggestion list!

Happy eating!

Calories	Fat	Cholesterol	Sodium	Potassium	Carbs	Protein	Fiber
81.2g	2.4g	11.2mg	94.68mg	305.8mg	93.52g	4.36g	1.18g