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Friday, December 16, 2011

The Couple That Eats Together...

This is an example of how I eat during the week:

Breakfast (old-fashioned oatmeal sprinkled with muscovado sugar) sitting next to Dan at the table. Not so bad, right? Wait. He works on a crossword puzzle and I work on checking email, news, weather, and Facebook status updates from people I barely know. We both try to keep track of Henry since he is a "morning dog", meaning he is at his orneriest and most likely getting into something. The other day I caught him trying to pull the Christmas lights off of our tree. He prefers ornaments, but they have all moved out of reach.

Lunch (leftovers from the night before or salad) at my desk, in front of the computer, on Twitter or working.

Dinner (something yummy we cook together; do we get points for that?) on the couch with the TV on, probably watching The Daily Show.

Isn't that terrible? I think so.

New Year's Resolution #1 (and there will be others)
Eat dinner. With Dan. At the table.

I know, it's a novel idea.

Resolutions like "lose weight" or "get healthy" are kind of nebulous and hard to achieve (although if they work for you, that's awesome). When are you officially "healthy" and how much weight lost is enough? I need something concrete and do-able, so I'm starting out 2012 by resolving to eat our dinners together at the table without the distractions of TV and computers at least 4 times per week. If it goes well, the sky (or 7) is the limit.

This was all inspired by an article posted on CNN recently about a woman who spent six months living in Paris with a Parisian family. It highlights five major lessons she's taken from the experience. One of those is that the family did not once sit down to dinner in front of the TV and zone out from each other. Dinner was always an event and always a delicious affair. We've got the delicious part down but could use some work with the rest of it.

If you already sit down to dinner at the table with your family and/or significant other, that is absolutely wonderful. If not, consider joining us in on this resolution!

For more healthy living ideas or great recipes, check out Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday.

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