So much health & nutrition information yet so little understanding

This is a guest post by Amanda’s mom

First, I want to thank everyone for all their loving, kind words of support for Amanda. They have been meaningful and deeply appreciated. It’s been a while since we updated Amanda’s story and we are getting back here to fill you in slowly but surely.

In the meantime, I want to tell you about a little bit of what I have been going through and experiencing as the mother of an overweight child. I can tell you that we don’t eat out much or fry tons of food so no, to that end, we don’t spend the day munching on potato chips and stuff like that. Still, we do tend to have meals with high carbs and working with Dr. Booker has made me more aware of the carbs we’ve been intaking as well as sugars, calories and portions.

In an effort to try to get our hands on more healthy cooking ideas, I turned to the Health & Nutrition section of a local Borders book store and found myself completely *lost* in an endless sea of books and reading choices.

I am not sure where exactly I should start? Look at the photo above … the selections are truly infinite. And it surely does NOT help to try to be in health and nutrition mode when all the fun, baking and non-health focused cook books are literally right in the same book section!!!

This is really *not* an easy feat. The distraction of “Hello, Cupcake!” … “Cake Doctor” … and “Mama Big Stuff Cookies” was totally not helping me stay in nutrition mode. I am not a master baker by no means but just look at these colorful, cute book covers! How can one resist, seriously?!?

OK, back to the focus at hand: healthier cookie, I mean *cooking* !!

I found this cute little book that wasn’t as intimidating as the many other health and nutrition books available: “350-Calorie Recipes” by Cooking Light.

What I liked about this book is that it wasn’t overloaded with health and nutrition babble. There are tons of photos and each recipe seems to have 5-10 ingredients.

Part of the challenge here at home is cooking for Amanda but also for a husband who can inhale a 3-course meal in two seconds flat and still be hungry. I can’t just cook really light meals all the time because The Hub will starve to death; or so he says!

I found the recipes in this book to look delicious, hearty and easy to prepare and am hoping that dishes like Tuscan-style Steaks and Fig and Chile-Glazed Pork Tenderloin will make Amanda feel that she’s not missing out while also keeping The Hub’s appetite at bay.

We’ll see how this goes …

In the meantime, fyi, I spoke with Amanda about coming up with a new blog post to share updates … we’ll both be back soon!