Running With Perseverance

This week I’m participating in Jill’s Fitness Friday blog hop, and taking the opportunity to vent about something that has been frustrating me for a while.

I’ve been on the health and fitness bandwagon for over ten years now, but I still get frustrated when my family just doesn’t get it. You know the phrase, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”? For me, it’s “You can set a healthy example, but you can’t make anyone follow.”

My first experience with this type of disappointment happened when I shared a great strawberry tart recipe from Cooking Light with my Dad. He proudly told me that they had made the recipe for a brunch, but used full-fat cream cheese instead of light cream cheese. Basically they didn’t follow the one change that made a lighter recipe because they were afraid that the recipe wouldn’t taste as good without the full-fat cheese. (Since I had made it myself, I knew it was delicious!)

I knew my son was a hopeless cause. He used to tease me by ordering a “heart attack on a plate” (a bacon cheese burger and fries), or a “diabetic coma on a plate” (a hot fudge brownie sundae) when we went out to eat. The best I could do was impose a “rule” that he had to pick one or the other.

At least he loves fruit. This is the decadent dessert he got on our family vacation to Germany last year–the sundae glass is filled with fruit and topped with one scoop of ice cream.

With my daughter my concerns run in the other direction. She seems to live off of Starbucks lattes and fruit and yogurt smoothies. Is that how college women do a “balanced diet” these days?

My husband presents different challenges. He wants to eat more healthfully, but sometimes he just doesn’t get it. His go-to snacks are graham crackers with peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches on soft white bread. (Have you taken a closer look at the Nutella nutrition information? I did, in this post.) Those snacks are fine once in a while, but don’t seem appropriate as a staple in the diet of someone with Type 2 diabetes.

He will ask me to buy “fruit and vegetables” at the grocery store, but unless I wash and slice the fruit and make tubs of celery sticks for him to take to work, these healthy foods will sit uneaten in the refrigerator for days.

Last week he asked me to buy ketchup and BBQ sauce at the grocery store–to put on the chicken nuggets he was planning to have for dinner while I went out of town. At least I convinced him to fix Purdue chicken nuggets from the grocery store instead of stopping at McDonald’s on the way home from work!

Nutrition isn’t the only thing he doesn’t get. He’s also behind on environmental issues and recycling. Have you seen waste bins like these?

This is from Starbucks, but they have similar ones at my son’s college. The idea is to remind you what happens to the waste that you do not recycle–it ends up in a landfill. At first my husband thought that was a good thing–confusing landfill with composting!

I know the healthy example that I am setting is making a difference, even if my family isn’t always close behind. In fact, the one change that everyone seems to have made is to drink more water!

Does your family follow your healthy example? 

Do you get frustrated when they don’t?