A healthier lifestyle | Our journey so far

From a lot of meat to no meat for dinner

Although I really don't need meat every day, my beloved partner is quite the carnivore, at least, so he thought. He had this thing in his mind that he would never be able to cut out the meat completely, and it would be mission impossible to switch to vegetarian. That is until he started watching more and more documentaries where it's been shown how bad meat actually is for a human's body.

He tried to motivate me to gain interest as well, long without success. Which honestly makes no sense because I don't value meat as much as he does, but I would not be able to commit (at least not now) saying that I will never touch a steak again. Mind you, we eat that like once every 6 months, tops. Haha.

Lately, I've found the need (I was drawn towards the veggies while shopping) to just explore new things. Veggies we never ate before (or at least, I never ate before) and combinations just by the gut feeling without even knowing if this will be any good. And so we came back from doing an outdoor family sports hour in the park, all hungry but nobody in the mood to prep something. I thought aha, broccoli is nowadays loved by all 3 of us, and these sweet potatoes I still need to test for the first time. Let's do something crazy and hope it turns out well.

I blanched the broccoli as they were frozen, and cut the sweet potato into small cubes. All together in the oven for quite some time (didn't pay attention to the time but it felt long) and voila, everything is done. I seriously love eggs myself and get excited with an egg in about every form you can imagine. I eat them with my french fries as well, dip the fries in the egg yolk, yum! So therefore I know the combo egg and potato can be delicious. I just had no idea if this would work with the sweet ones as well.

Oh well, it doesn't hurt to try it, I made omelets and added a bunch of the potato plus broccoli. My boyfriend's face was quite priceless when I put this in front of him.. I thought he wouldn't like it but to my surprise, he said this is actually good. Weird, but good. Afterward, we realized this was the first meatless meal I cooked without even thinking about meat. In every salad I prepare is either meat or fish. I never end up serving something without any meat when it comes to dinner. So this was a breakthrough especially because we liked it.

I've noticed I'm much more conscious when buying meat

Where I used to go to the supermarket and buy chicken, bacon, minced meat etc without even thinking about it, it was obviously something wired in my brain that we prepare our food and use some kind of meat (or fish) and prep the rest of the dinner around it. Today I can honestly say, that I buy much more vegetables and my brain works the other way around when thinking about what we will eat. I add something to the vegetables (or not).

Funny thing is, that since I deliberately made the decision of cutting out meat and fish at least twice a week, I somehow am turned off by certain foods while I used to think of them as a great addition to our meals. It probably sounds weird maybe, but it's true.

Little lady who didn't like vegetables

Our daughter was the biggest hurdle honestly when talking about eating healthier. We ourselves know healthier food equals a healthier brain (even though we don't always hold ourselves to that and cheat lol), but the little lady in the house wasn't easily convinced. We tried every trick in the book without much success until the summer.

It was quite a headache thinking about her refusing the food at school as it were all things she didn't know or like. Thankfully, soon we noticed she started trying things we could never convince her to try. And believe me when I say, we tried! I was afraid that with her bad immume system she'd catch every virus or infection from classmates instantly, so when she started to eat new things at school, we were delighted!

While both my boyfriend and kiddo were traveling together from and to school and office, I had dinner prepped when they arrived home and things started to get more smooth by the day. I was happy that I finally didn't feel that cooking or thinking about what to cook was an obstacle but a pleasure quite often. The last thing was letting our little human join the veggie journey as well.

Veggie art was the trick!

I've tried this before, but probably she was still a bit too young to be motivated by this, but about a month ago, I introduced some veggie art on her plate when they arrived home. Not only did she get super excited "Daddy, daddy, look what mommy made, aaawhhh flowers... aaawhhh so cute" that kind of thing, but she actually ate it all!

As you can see, it's not that much but for a child that didn't even want to eat cucumbers until recently, this was a great victory!

The next day, I challenged my luck by adding a lot more to the artwork and used paprika as well. To my surprise, did she eat all of it, only her reaction to the tomatoes was so horrible to watch after she attempted to eat it the other weeks as well that we decided she didn't have to eat the tomatoes anymore. After all, she's allowed to dislike something as well. I replace the tomatoes with red paprika for her, which she does fancy.

Quality time with the family

Both my boyfriend and I were talking about getting exercise for a while now, but we never actually took the step. All kind of reasons (and excuses!) for us not to take that road. Another good thing about the lockdowns is that on top of the healthier food for all of us, we started to realize that exercise is needed to stay healthy and boost the immune system. One day I said, from tomorrow after your work ends, we go to the park for at least an hour to have some exercise and let her play in the playground or do some football together.

And so we did, too bad that I'm currently trying to let my knee heal from a shitty move I made. Not even caused by the running itself, but by taking the stairs down instead of the elevator. Lol, I felt sporty and healthier and thought no more elevator if not needed, so there I went, HUGE mistake, my knee didn't appreciate it and now I'm facing the consequences.

To make sure that the not being able to run issue won't turn into a "we won't go exercising at all anymore" thing, we decided to order some boxing gear next month as soon as the salary has arrived so that we can also do some workouts at home. It will also be better when it's raining and snowing soon. I already knew the running was not the best move for my already damaged knees, but at least I tried and felt healthier when starting it.

I'm still determined to do some workouts on a daily basis and am quite confident that we will all feel much healthier in a few months due to the changes we made.

Conclusion

Although the intentions are great, sometimes we fall back in old habits, but at least having the right mindset is making it a lot easier to actually proceed with certain changes in our lifestyles. It's quite an epiphany to go to the supermarket and plan the meals around the vegetables rather than the (previously) main ingredients called meat or fish.

I feel within my body and mind that I can make the changes and that once they have become the normal routine, I won't fall back. Until then, I'm allowing myself to fall back if it happens and just learn from it. I literally have to learn how to cook with a lot of new things I always refused to eat (a lot of vegetables!) so trial and error it is, and that's perfectly fine. At least I'm trying, and I'm so lucky to have a partner that eats everything I put in front of him, even when it's not really something he fancies, he will always eat and be thankful for the effort.

Together we will get there <3