Staying Informed

I used to be a fairly informed person. I would know what was going on in the world and be interested too. Then I had kids and my tender mommy heart took over. I couldn't handle watching the news anymore because it upset me too much. While our world has a lot of beauty, it has a lot of ugliness and news is often heavy on the ugly. However, now that my kids are getting older and I've had a 6 year break from reality, I've been feeling the need to become informed again.

I haven't been so bad. At least I knew that there was an election last week. My husband works with some people that didn't even know that. And instead of embarking on a discussion of the election, they asked about when the American presidential election was. What the? And they wonder why voter turn out was so poor.

So, I now have a link (along with my blog reader) on my homepage with the news headlines. I am going to try to be a little more informed again.

One of my biggest interests right now is nutrition. Appropriate given my current goals. As I become healthier, I desire to help my kids grow up healthy too. Nothing like an ex-fat kid trying to help her kids not be fat. I'm a little lost in that area. I know, 4 food groups blah, blah, blah. But I want to know more than that. I want to understand the actual benefits (not just the advertised ones) of eating organic. I want to incorporate the Glycemic Index more into our family diet in a way that the kids will actually eat the food. I want my kids to grow up strong, with good eating habits that will hopefully help them in the fight that their genetics already has a head start on.

So, I decided that I want to go back to school and study to be a nutritionist. I'm good at science. I like to think I'm good with people. My heart breaks when I see an obese child. It would marry my interests with something good I could do in the world. So I looked into it and short of moving to a city, I don't see a way that it'll happen. Not if I want to become registered. Sigh. I stand behind our move up here to Northern Alberta...but this is disappointing. I'll admit.

Perhaps things will change. But for now, I found a blog yesterday that I think may help me learn a little about food and nutrition. Weighty Matters is a blog written by a doctor who talks about health and the headlines. I like his point of view and it may help me stay a little more focused on making sure my children's diet isn't completely sugar.