Okay, let's get something straight.  Yes, I am part owner of a business called "Healthy Girls", but that doesn't preclude me from the same food and exercise issues that everyone has.  I LOVE Christmas - for so many reasons - not the least of which is the food.  I love everything about it.  I love shopping for the ingredients.  I love the actually preparation and cooking of the food.  I love all of the baking.  And most especially, I love the consumption!!  Yummy!  There is something very comforting and loving in preparing something nourishing (if only for nourishing one's soul) for those that you love.  It really is a showing of love. 

Seems I've been feeling a bit too "loved" lately!  I have cooked and baked and I have been cooked and baked for all season.  I've had to remind myself that cookies are not the reason for the season!  As my mother would say, "Lord be praised, my belly's raised, an inch above the table!"  We at Healthy Girls preach the good word of moderation - in all things.  We are not nutrition nazis!  A little treat now and again is fine.  However, what I've been engaged in cannot be classified as a "little" anything!  And the exercise thing - well, let's just say I don't think it counts when you merely run to the refrigerator!  Again, at HG, we don't harp on strict exercise guidelines.  Do something that's fun, that you enjoy and do it regularly.  I'll be climbing back on the nutrition train and heading back to yoga class and walking around my neighborhood very soon.  Perhaps right after the new year!!

My daughters have been shocked at their mother's eating habits lately - and even more so by their mother's allowing them to eat "junk food."  We are typically pretty good about always including fruits and vegetables with our meals, always getting outside for some fresh air and exercise, and always getting a good amount of rest.  This last month - not so much.  My girls keep looking at me very closely as if to see if I'm in there somewhere.  I actually told my girls after a Christmas parade one day that we could have ice cream for lunch!!  My oldest looked hard at me and said, "are you my mother?"  I'm glad that behavior elicits a response of disbelief.  That they understand that this is short-lived and their mother will snap out of it eventually.  The get that the way we usually live is healthy and good and what we've been doing has been unhealthy and bad.  Good that these little girls, 5 and 7, understand that basic premise.  Now if they can just reel their mother in!!

I'd love to hear about your challenges and triumphs over the holidays.  And what kind of a role model have you been?  Have your kids picked up good habits from you?  Do they at least understand the difference between good eating and bad?

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas.  Keep checking back - we'll be having some big announcements soon!