Cookies for Breakfast
I'm a food tracker. In many seasons over the last 7ish years, I have used an app called My Fitness Pal to track what I eat. It started in an extraordinarily hopeless season of life when I just needed a win. There was very little I had control over at that time, but I could control my caloric intake. I set a calorie goal, and it became a game - a way to win every single day. An unexpected journey toward health began from that desperate game as I started losing weight and feeling better. VERY slowly, I started making intentional changes and realized that I was capable of so much more than winning a game of numbers and food portions. I could re-wire myself - mentally, physically and emotionally.
I have struggled (still do!) with unstable insulin levels and blood sugar problems my entire life. I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia in 3rd grade after having endless grown-up sized headaches. I never did anything proactively about it until I started food tracking. In the beginning, since I was really only trying to find a win, I learned how to manipulate my meals to make sure there was still room for a piece of dark chocolate and a glass of red wine at the end of the day. #priorities
Over time, however, I began to understand that I could counteract blood sugar issues, being overweight, and many other unfortunate side effects of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome if I took just a few more steps. I quit sugar completely. (Have no fear, there is still a way to eat very dark chocolate. No more red wine though!) I started heavy weightlifting. And I found the macro-mix that works for my body. Today, I use My Fitness Pal mostly for macronutrient tracking - 40% protein is my daily goal, and it takes a lot of planning.
God impressed a message on my heart the day Benjamin was born that seemed very random just hours after childbirth, "Watch his sugars." So we do. Benjamin has never tasted sugar, not even honey or sweeteners. That may be why he has a very real infatuation with grapes - nature's sugar cube. Not kidding... He saw a picture with grapes in it the other day, and it took a full 24 hours to manage the emotion that came with not having said grapes. Once I gave him a punnet of grapes to snack on in the trolley while I grocery shopped. He shouted to every shopper he saw, "I HAVE GRAPES!", ate almost the entire box, and I had to call Chris on the way home and promise that I had not given him Red Bull. 😂 That one trip conditioned him to beg for grapes EVERY time we go to any grocery store.
The first sugar-free year was easy because we were on a tight lockdown. Now, church gatherings and birthday parties lavishly deck table tops with cake, cookies and juice. Chris stands firmly with me as we politely refuse both the sugary snacks and the sympathetic looks people give Benjamin for missing out on an assumingely essential part of childhood. It's really all about the grapes, anyway. Time has shown that Benjamin may very well have inherited a funky blood sugar situation from his mama. And both his earthly and Heavenly Father have shows that they care enough to do something about it.
A true babyccino lover. It’s just steamed milk, and I’m the mom who always says, “No chocolate sprinkles!” to the barista.
This morning I tried a new recipe for "Breakfast Cookies". Benjamin helped me mash bananas, and I added peanut butter, chia seeds, ground flax, oats, cinnamon and vanilla. I skipped the honey the recipe calls for. Lifa hated them. To be fair, they were not sweet at all, and flaxseed does taste a little like cardboard. Benjamin shouted, "COOKIES! DADDY! WHOA!" He threw himself into his dad's office to show him his new cookies, and proceeded to eat about five of them. Huge win - I'll share the recipe below!
We've heard all kinds of comments as we've declined snacks or brought our own. Most of them to the effect of, "How on earth did you manage that?" Or "Wow, that's impressive." Or "Oh shame, sorry Benjamin." It's nothing impressive. It's just obedience. Sometimes obedience in the silliest, most seemingly out of place flutters of the spirit have the greatest impact. I believe we are helping wire Benjamin for long-term health. We have no expectation of him never eating sugar, but we have an opportunity to set him up for a win.
So do you. Maybe it's not health or sugar - or maybe it is. We all have an area in our lives - a flutter in our spirits maybe - that we could rewire and renew if we refused the world's ways or the sideways glances of others. Many moms have thought I was depriving my child of abundant life dipped in chocolate, when I know God is setting him up for so much more. They don't see the joy-filled cookie monster I saw charging through the halls, so pleased to show his treasure to his daddy this morning.
I love this quote from CS Lewis. My dream for myself and our children is that our cravings would be deep and insatiable without Jesus that we would savor the good, healthy treasures He's given us in this lifetime, and then run, run, run straight into our heavenly daddy's arms to celebrate.
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”