Saturday, April 3, 2010

Confession

My children are appalled.

They feel betrayed.

I had such a difficult time actually pulling the item off the shelf and placing it in my cart.

The horror.

The hypocrisy.

Confession.

I am beginning a huge 90 day exercise program on Monday. ChaLEAN Extreme. Part of this program is menu planning. One of the suggestions that Chalene made for those of us who can not be trusted to take a bag of pretzels/nuts/etc. off the shelf, and eat the recommended serving size, is to use these small snack bags to separate the serving size of each item.

And I have done just that. Two bags of pretzels and a box of gingersnaps have been reduced to several snack baggies in my pantry, each containing 8 pretzels and 5 cookies. The kids now know that one bag is what they eat - not a handful, or two, or three, directly from the bag (which ultimately results in the item being depleted in a day).

We keep a basket in the pantry for the empty baggies.

But still, I admit that this is a flip-flop from my former platform.

If you look in my cupboards and in my fridge, you will still find several reusable containers which I use to pack snacks for my kids lunches, as I shudder to think of these bags being thrown in the trash at school. But as for using them here in the house for portion controlling dry snacks, I've caved.

I'm not entirely pleased with this decision. In fact, I'm struggling over it. All it took was Harper yelling, "Mom! Why did you buy these?" to know that I've taught my child well.

Thankfully, my kids are with the plan, and thus there are several used empty bags hanging out in the snack pantry ready to be refilled.

As penance I will break down a ton of boxes today and drag them, and our paper recyclables to the recycle drop down the street.

Will that count as absolution?



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joline-
Stumbled across your blog and love it! Wanted to tell you that if you're feeling the urge to splurge, check out www.laptoplunches.com for awesome lunch boxes for the kiddos. We've had ours for almost 3 years now and they are so awesome, especially if you are into reusable containers! Best of luck on the fitness program!
Kristen Teeter

Joline said...

@Kristen

Well, howdy!!!!!!!!!! Good to hear from you. I just googled Lara the other day 'cause he was mentioned briefly in Kristen Chenoweth's bio. Made me think back fondly to Light Opera Works.

Hope all is well!

Margot said...

Girlfriend, I SOOO hear you.

Sad twist to the plot: I recently discovered my youngest has been tossing the RUBBERMAID CONTAINERS into the trash in lieu of bringing them home with the yogurt, carrots, etc. he didn't want to eat. I'd known for awhile we were having depletion problems, but it took me awhile to crack the case.

It still keeps me up at night.

Debbie Legg said...

We always rinse out the bags and reuse them, unless they've had raw meat in them or have a hole. :)

Amy said...

Explain the trade off: being thin is great for the environment. The less you weigh the less fuel it takes to transport you, food it takes to fuel your body, cloth it takes to cover you, etc. All around, fewer resources wasted. That has to be worth a box of plastic bags (that can be reused).