It was truly a life-changing movie for me.
I became kind of obsessed with other documentaries like it. I watched what felt like everything Netflix had to offer on the subject of healthy eating and living. I watched my favorites two or three times, and my husband even joined me for a couple of them. I ingested all that I could and then strove to find a plan for healthy eating that would fit for me and my family.
I'm writing this post because since I began to make some changes in my diet, I've seen others commenting that healthy living is just too difficult, so they give up. They try to give up all processed foods or go completely vegan or whatever it is they feel they need to do for the health of their family, but after a few weeks or months of going all in, they realize it's too difficult and give it all up completely. For them, it's all or nothing.
I'm here to say that it's not all or nothing. We can all make a few changes to our diet that will have positive impacts on our health, and that we will be able to manage over a long period of time without feeling overwhelmed or burned-out which often come from making too-drastic changes all at once.
After watching all of those documentaries, I took the time to process all of that new information and then prioritized it and chose just a couple of things that I could implement into my family's life. After a few months of living with those new changes, I added another one. And then another a couple of months after that. As I look back on the past 21 months from when I started making those changes, I can see that our diet looks a lot different now than it did then. And it was something I worked on gradually, a little bit at a time, and I will continue to work on improving it and implementing new changes that I learned and will learn in the future.
I will also say that I have seen a huge difference in my energy level, mood, and overall satisfaction with my body and myself. Things still aren't perfect, mind you--I am a work in progress--but no joke and no exaggeration, last fall I noticed that I had more energy than I've had since before I started college. I was able to wake up easier, I no longer needed an afternoon nap every day, and I was much more productive than I'd been since having my second baby. Like I said, I noticed these changes last fall, while I was pregnant with my third baby and had two preschoolers to chase after all day. Seriously, more energy in that condition and environment. Unbelievable! But so true.
This is the first of a series of posts I'll write explaining these changes I made, and my goal is to share with you how my diet looked before the changes, what I learned from the documentaries, and the changes I made as a result of that knowledge. I also want to share what changes I didn't make and why because, like I said, it's been a gradual process for me and certainly not all or nothing. I will try my best to reference the documentaries I watched (there really were a lot of them) and include a list of them at the end so that you can look them up if you would like to learn more or double-check the authenticity of their claims. I hope that you will learn something new and begin to think about what small changes you can make to help yourself, your family, and the environment be healthier and happier.
Change #1--Eat Less Processed Foods and More Real Food
Our Diet Before:
- Breakfast
- Cold cereal
- Pancakes from a box (just add water)
- Pancake syrup
- Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
- Lunch
- Sandwiches with wheat bread
- Mac 'n' Cheese
- Ramen noodles
- Hot Pockets
- Snacks
- Chips
- Crackers
- Cookies
- Fresh and canned fruit
- Dinner
- Frozen foods like pizza, lasagna, and other ready-to-eat convenience foods
- Casseroles with Cream of Something soups
- White pasta
- White rice
- Fresh, frozen, but mostly canned veggies
- Drinks
- Fruit juice
- Crystal Light
- Kool-Aid
- Milk
- Water
What I Learned:
"The problem is we are not eating food anymore. We are eating food-like products. And they are adorned. They are made to look better and smell better and be presented so that people are attracted to them...So the objective is not really to give you a healthy product. It is to give you a product that will make you buy it, that will last long, and will make a lot of money for the company that's producing it." ~Dr. Alejandro Junger (1)
As a freshman in college, out in the world for the very first time, and also in charge of my own shopping and cooking for the first time, I was introduced to the wonderful world of Pasta Roni. What a heck of a deal! I remember thinking, literally, Why would I spend money in the produce aisle when I can get the benefits of broccoli right here in my Broccoli and Cheese Pasta Roni? Seriously, I had that thought. All I needed to do was add a chicken breast to it, and I had a full meal! You know how much that little meal-in-a-box cost me? $1.00. I could get ten for a dollar each with Albertson's 10 for $10 deal. So I practically lived off of those things. It really would've been a waste of money to buy real broccoli for $2.00/lb, so I was making a smart move, right?
Oh. Ooh, silly, naive little freshman girl. How wrong you were.
Since then, I have learned that there are two kinds of nutrients that our bodies need: micronutrients and macronutrients. In order for our cells, or the building blocks of everything our bodies are, to be strong and healthy, we need micronutrients. And the only way we can get micronutrients is to eat fruits and vegetables. Everything else is macronutrients. (2) So fruits and vegetables need to be not just a part of our daily diet. Not even a big part. They need to be a prominent or major or leading-role part of our everyday diet.
I guess since veggies have always been served as a side dish in our culture, I translated that to mean that they were optional. A good idea, but not necessary. If you want to stay full and be strong and healthy, you needed lots of meat, dairy, and carbs. As long as you have those, you'll be fine. It's crazy how being told one thing your whole life can end up being just the opposite of what you really need. If you want to be healthy on a cellular level, you have to have vegetables and fruits. And a lot of them.
Canned and dehydrated fruits and vegetables do have nutritional value, but they lose it over time. Frozen ones keep their nutritional value but lose some once they're cooked. The most nutritious food you can eat are raw fruits and veggies. So, freshman girl, to answer your question, no, little specks of supposedly dehydrated broccoli are not a suitable substitution for the real thing. I would've been better off scrapping the Pasta Roni all together and just going with a head of broccoli.
And you know what else I learned about those "dehydrated " specks of fruits and veggies found in processed food? I haven't researched the broccoli specifically, but I do know that those "blueberries" found in pancake mix are nothing more than a bunch of chemicals, the same chemical that's used to winterize vehicles. (1) I would be surprised if the "broccoli" wasn't made from something similar. Yummy, and oh so nutritious, wouldn't you agree?
Speaking of chemicals, I also learned a lot about the different chemicals used in processed food. I feel like I could write a blog post entirely devoted to this subject, but I'll keep it simple for you: there are a few chemicals that were mentioned in these documentaries that have stuck with me and that are in a lot of products you wouldn't necessarily think they would be in. I try really hard to avoid them. They are:
- High fructose corn syrup
- Hydrogenated oils
- Aspartame
- Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
- Isolates
Foods that contain these ingredients include:
- Pizza and pasta sauces (high fructose corn syrup or HFCS)
- Peanut butter (hydrogenated oils)
- Jams and jellies (HFCS)
- Breads (HFCS)
- Pancake syrup (which interestingly enough contain no maple so really can't be called "maple syrup") (HFCS)
- Diet soda (Aspartame)
- Crystal Light (Aspartame)
- Cream of anything soup (MSG)
- Granola bars claiming to be high in protein (soy isolates)
- Ketchup, BBQ sauce, and salad dressings (HFCS)
- Popsicles (HFCS)
The first change I made was to replace items I already ate with healthier alternatives. This may sound difficult, but I assure you, it's not. I simply began reading ingredient labels and found products that #1-Didn't have any of the above-mentioned chemicals. #2-Had a list of ingredients that I could pronounce (no weirdo scientific names that I have no idea what they are). And #3-Fit within my budget. Lucky for me, a lot of companies have jumped on the bandwagon and are offering "All Natural" varieties of their much-loved products. Hunt's, for example, has an 100% natural ketchup that I think tastes better than the regular stuff and is comparable in price. I found a new pasta sauce that is all natural and less expensive than Prego or Ragu. And Adam's peanut butter has an ingredient list of two things: peanuts and salt (they also have a saltless variety, but I think it's kinda gross. Some things are just meant to be salted).
I also began to add more fruits and veggies to our diet. I bought less canned ones, more frozen ones, and a lot more fresh ones. Our fridge is now loaded with fresh fruits and veggies after every shopping trip, and we try to eat them with every meal and for snacks as well. And this may be surprising for some, but my kids love them! They enjoy helping me load up produce bags while at the store, and I often catch them sneaking, not just fruit, but carrots, tomatoes, mini sweet peppers, and lemons and limes out of the fridge (that's right, I said lemons and limes). We had sliced cucumbers with our sandwiches for lunch one day, and Trey liked them so much, he asked for more while on our next shopping trip. So kids will eat them and even like them if you provide them for them, is what I'm saying.
Our Diet After:
- Breakfast
- Cold cereal
- Whole wheat pancakes from scratch
- Pancake syrup without HFCS (I don't buy real maple syrup because it's pretty expensive and I feel that eliminating the HFCS is good enough for us right now)
- Spiced Carrot Muffins
- Baked Oatmeal
- Cream of Wheat
- Natural peanut butter and honey sandwiches
- Lots of fresh and frozen fruit (I don't buy organic at this point, again, because of the price. I'm waiting for it to become the more popular option and thus the less expensive option. Or the only option, whichever comes first. The way things are going, that's bound to happen sooner or later, right?)
- Lunch
- Sandwiches with homemade wheat bread (I got a bread maker from my in-laws for Christmas one year. I love using it to save money 'cause we eat a lot of bread)
- Bean and cheese burritos (I still use flour tortillas because I don't like the taste of whole wheat ones and I really don't like the corn ones, so this is one thing I haven't changed at this point)
- Wraps or pitas
- Salads
- Mac 'n' Cheese (although my 4-year-old said a couple of weeks ago that he was sick of Mac 'n' Cheese *Shocker!* so I haven't bought a lot of them lately)
- Ramen noodles (sometimes, you just need quick and simple, even if it isn't the best option)
- Snacks
- Fresh fruit
- Veggies with salad dressing without HFCS, hummus, or guacamole
- Crackers (I recently realized that Ritz, one of my all-time favorite crackers, contains HFCS. [Noooo!] We still eat it, but I try to buy it less often).
- Dinner
- Casseroles with a homemade white sauce
- Whole wheat pasta
- Pasta sauce without HFCS
- Brown rice
- Lots of fresh veggies, sometimes frozen, rarely canned
- Drinks
- Water
- Milk
- Produce that we juice ourselves
- Fruit juice
- Buy fresh or frozen fruit and veggies instead of canned. Canned have added sugar or salt and lose nutrients over time. Frozen have the same amount of nutrients as fresh.
- Try to have at least one fruit or veggie with every meal and snack. As time goes by, you could up that goal to two or more to make sure you're getting lots of those micro-nutrients. I never feel satisfied without a fruit or veggie at every meal, and sometimes even have veggies for breakfast!
- Switch from white breads, pasta, or rice to whole wheat or brown. This is a simple substitution to make to meals you're already eating, and it's amazing how quickly your taste buds will adjust to the new flavors. I really don't even like anything white anymore (except tortillas)! And I don't feel like they have as much substance as wheat products, so I don't feel as full after eating them.
- Read labels and find foods made with all natural ingredients. As I said before, many companies have already made the switch and offer these healthier alternatives (for example, Log Cabin pancake syurp and Wishbone salad dressings are made without HFCS). Again, it's an easy substitution for foods that you already eat. Reading labels may be tedious at first, but soon you'll know which brands to buy and which to avoid, and you won't even need to think twice about it.
- Start adding new, healthier recipes to your menu plan each week. For me, learning to cook without condensed cream soups was a bit of a challenge because almost every casserole I made had one in it! But I found a website that has casserole recipes that are similar to the ones I made but had a homemade white sauce instead of a soup. And you know what? They taste 100% better than those recipes! Take that, MSG! If you can just gradually find new recipes that you and your family enjoy to replace those old ones, then over time, you'll weed out those fatty dishes and have only the healthier ones in your monthly rotation.
- Join a co-op in your area, like Bountiful Baskets, in order to buy more produce while spending less. We have enjoyed filling our fridge with fruits and veggies we've never tried before along with our favorites at a fraction of the cost.
- Try juicing! It's a quick and easy way to add more vegetables to your diet, and it's tasty too! Seriously, I think you'd be surprised by how sweet fruits are on their own and vegetables as well, no sugar necessary. I do like to add an apple or pear to my vegetable juices to sweeten them up even more, so I end up "eating" an apple, a few carrots, a bunch of spinach, kale, and cilantro, and half a lime in just a few minutes and soaking up all of those vitamins and minerals really quickly. It's a much better energy boost than an energy drink, minus the crash, and it's actually nurturing your body. Win-win-win!
Have you noticed the little logo found on produce bags nowadays? It says, "More Matters." And I believe that's true. The more good stuff you add to your diet, the less you'll have the not-so-good. The more fruit you snack on, the less potato chips you snack on. The more water you drink, the less pop you'll drink. It just takes baby steps, and before you know it, instead of those fake, chemical-ridden, brain-altering foods, you'll be craving what our Creator always meant for us to eat--fresh, delicious, and nutritious real food.
Find out what other changes I made in Part 2 of this series, coming soon!
References--
1) Hungry for Change
2) Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead
For Further Study--
Foodmatters
The Gerson Miracle
The Engine 2 Diet
Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead 2
Vegucated
GMO OMG
Ted Talks
Killer at Large
Forks Over Knives
No comments:
Post a Comment