All or Nothing

You may or may not remember this post way back this spring. Well, I took my decision that day very seriously and I am delighted to say that now, over seven months later, my family is eating more healthily than we ever have. Surprisingly, everyone took the changes made very well and they have learned to love and choose healthy options over unhealthy ones most of the time. Our bodies have even changed to the point where we can't tolerate the processed foods of the typical American diet without feeling ill. {Interject funny story-Chris had to stop eating a piece of pecan pie on Thanksgiving because he wasn't feeling well. If you know Chris at all, you know he never stops eating anything. Upon inspection of the box which the pie came in, it was found that the main ingredient was corn syrup... hmm... He claims I've ruined him, lol!} To top it all off, I've lost about 20 pounds and counting in those seven months without even trying! {woot!}

So, what have we done? Well, for starters, we read. We read a LOT. Chris read many of Michael Pollan's books including Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. I read portions of many books such as The Real Food Revival, Real Food, and Nourishing Traditions. I also scoured the web finding websites like Weston Price's and recipe blogs like the Heavenly Homemaker's. We also watched movies borrowed from the library like King Corn. To put it bluntly, we were appalled. Suddenly the thought of feeding our family things like high fructose corn syrup(HFCS) and beef raised in feed lots made us sick.

That leads to our second course of action. Change. Eliminating all HFCS and refined flours and sugars from our home proved to be quite a task. You would be astonished by how many things HFCS is in. Everything from store bought bread and pancake mix to ketchup and cereal. And they all had to go. Fortunately, the internet is a wonderful tool and I've been able to search out products that don't contain HFCS and find delicious recipes for made from scratch items like our new favorite bbq sauce and baking my own whole wheat breads has proven to be very rewarding and tasty.

Once we'd eliminated all the bad, we added back in lots and lots of fresh fruits and veggies. We now enjoy(yes, my children now ask for) a spinach salad with cheese, raisins, and almonds with most meals. Another thing we've added a LOT of is dairy. Good, quality, organic dairy. Lots of milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, and cream. An important thing that we learned about dairy in all of our research is that low-fat is not good for you. The fat in milk is very, very good for you. Low-fat milks and cheeses actually have all kinds of "stuff" added into them. While I haven't been able to bring myself to drinking whole milk yet, I know that it's inevitably what we'll do. I'd love to get to the point of using raw milk as it's health benefits are numerous. For now, we are eating raw cheese and oh.my.goodness. it is sooooo yummy. We've also been eating free-range, organic meats as much as is financially feasible. One favorite is Smart Chicken. We are also very fortunate to have affordable local sources of organic beef and eggs.

So, we are in no way being deprived of delicious foods or having to eat tasteless low-fat counterfeits. My family eats gooood, real food and we're feeling great and staying healthy. I felt like I simply had to share. After all, what kind of friend would I be if I didn't tell you how I lost 20lbs without dieting or ridiculously rigorous exercise routines?!