food, diet and healthy eating

i'm about to blog about a touchy subject here...alright, so this diet and food situation.  i have always been naturally slim and never really had to worry about a diet, in fact i have spent most of my life trying to gain weight.  right off the bat let me just say, unless you have been underweight yourself, please don't make any judgements about it.  it is not "lucky" to be underweight, ladies that are naturally slim aren't "disgusting" to look at, and just as people should not criticize women who are overweight, they should also not be critical of skinny girls.  i don't know how many times throughout my life people have told me i look gross, or anorexic or that i need to gain weight.  really?  is that ok?  hellllll no!  just, don't comment on people's weight, it is not ok, no matter their size. so anyway, i have always had a sweet tooth, growing up i spent my allowance on candy and my grandparents would take us for the weekend, let us pick some cookies and ice cream and candy bars for after dinner and we'd eat them together while hanging out.  and i also enjoy eating meats and bacon and other things that are delicious yet unhealthy in mass quantities.  so after a couple years of marriage, hubby, who eats pretty healthily, suggested that we have a more varied diet that relies less on red meat.  we did a decent job of incorporating more variety and meatless dinners.  before pregnancy i had finally reached a good weight for my body and we were eating more healthily.  during pregnancy i followed my cravings and really tried to watch the sweets.  but luckily i didn't really have crazy cravings, often times i wanted fruits. even then i still gained about 40-45 lbs.  i was a little concerned at first because the recommendation is 25-35 lbs but my midwife said it was fine since i was a tiny bit underweight pre-pregnancy.  after baby z was born, i decided not to worry about losing the weight for awhile and just focus on being a mother and feeding my baby.  it has now been almost 7 months since my baby was born and i am still up about 10 lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight, which is actually a good weight for me but unfortunately a lot of it is in my mid-section.  ahhh, pregnancy!  so at this stage i feel like i can pay a little more attention to eating a more balanced diet and getting an exercise routine going.  i want to do this for myself, but also for my family.  it will make hubby happy and i want us to set a good example for baby z.  and i hope i can be consistent with exercise since i will be starting school up again soon.  anyway, my first step with diet is to eat lots more fruits and veg.  at this point i really only eat one or two servings of fruits and veg per day so i need to kick that up about 5 notches.  most of the slacking is due to the time issue, it is sometimes hard to prepare a full balanced meal while i am taking care of the baby and trying to get other stuff done.  so i started to set aside a little time, 30 minutes or so a week, and chop up a bunch of veg, store them in a ziplock bag in the fridge and make some yummy dip like hummus for a quick and healthy snack during the day.

  i also make sure to have something fun to go along with fruit or find other ways to use fruit like in a smoothie, in my cereal, or eating my apple with peanut butter.  since there isn't a lot of my favorite fruits in season right now and i get tired of eating apples and pears (and other more fun fruit is so dang expensive!  78 cents for ONE kiwi??!!) i have to think of different ways to prepare them.  so then my next step is to substitute one or two red meat dinners with something else like fish or beans, quinoa, etc.  this sometimes is more difficult because then i really have to plan ahead and think about what those meals can be otherwise i fall back on something quick like bean burritos or something similar like tacos, taco salad or tostadas, which is fine but i would like to try to incorporate more variety.  so i am going to work on those two steps for a bit until i can be consistent and then work on adding in exercise and cutting back on the sugar (not out completely cause i love me some cake).  what about y'all?  do you struggle with eating a more healthy diet consistently?  have you overcome this?  any tips for us?