I've always thought eating organically was for the hippies (haha). I know, I'm an anomaly in the blogging world. (Don't even get me started on all the oils and stuff that people are putting on their new born babies.) My SIL asked the other day what got me started thinking about making the change and I couldn't put my finger on one specific incident. As I was reflecting on it more today I started to realize that this had been a long time coming, little tid bits I'd hear from different places all began to build up in my psyche. Then, a few days ago, I was watching one of my guilty pleasure reality TV shows. This girl was talking about infertility and how it seems like so many more women are dealing with infertility now days than ever before. She mentioned how she wondered if it had something to do with the food we eat and all of the chemicals and hormones that are injected into them. That really stuck with me. I've never had to deal with infertility, but from what I know about it...it just sucks! There's no other way to put it. Who knows, maybe we hear more about infertility issues now because most people are starting to have children later on in life or because we are just a lot more open in our society to talk about feelings and deeper subjects now. Either way, you can't help but wonder if it does play some minor role in these types of cases.
As a Health teacher, I know what I should be eating. I would say, compared to the average American, we do a fine job. We eat red meat sparingly, we have a vegetable or fruit with every meal, we don't drink a ton of soda, when we have beef or bacon it is always turkey alternatives, we try to drink a lot of water each day, we eat low fat dairy products (except J who still drinks whole milk) and I don't buy a ton of candy or anything like that (sometimes your health benefits from being cheap). I even stopped buying chicken breasts awhile ago when I took a look at the chicken breasts we bought and realized I'd never seen a chicken that big in my life! We still eat a lot of chicken, but I like to stick to the tenderloins because it just seems more natural? That isn't scientific based in any way, but I felt better about it. It's certainly a lot less fatty than the breast we had been buying before.
As a Health teacher, I know the importance of quality selections from each food group. I'm not interested in any fad diets or trends. We aren't trying to lose weight, we are trying to make healthy, long-lasting, lifestyle changes. Several of my friends recommended the Paleo diet. I've only researched it a little bit because, from what I've seen, it just isn't practical for our family. There's no way I could cut out all dairy or wheat or beans. I could if we needed to, but I don't want to. There are many health benefits from dairy, wheat, and beans--as long as you're eating the right kinds. It's a great option for many people, but just doesn't meet all of our needs.
My SIL gave me some great advice about not trying to change everything right at once. It really is just so overwhelming! So we are going to start this week by buying organic fruits and vegetables. We've talked about getting a juicer, but I read they can be a pain to clean. Also, we still live in an apartment, I'm not sure we could fit another appliance in this joint! Right now we've just been buying the Naked smoothies and I really like them so far! I think our next step will be to find farm fed meat. I have no idea how expensive that is (Does anyone know?) or if you can even buy that in a local grocery store (Anyone? Anyone?), but I'll find out next week! I also want to start collecting healthier recipeces. I was noticing at the store this week that many of our recipes call for cheese---like, we eat a ton of cheese! I think there is a place for cheese, but not in almost every dinner--that seems a bit much!
Does anyone have any great sites, blogs, books, thoughts, or opinions on any of this? I really would like to stick to research based information because there is just too much propaganda and hoopla mixed in with this subject. Bahaha, hoopla, never thought I'd type that word out.
We started this a couple of years ago, too. I have no research-based information on the topic, but I know that we have been healthier and we have saved so much money over the years, which seems silly.
ReplyDeleteAt first, we started with organic fruits, veggies, and cereals and slowly made our way into other natural or organic products. Two years later, however, I have realized that there can be a balance between what I was buying three years ago and what I was actually buying. I stopped buying completely organic and natural and just paid more attention to labels.
Currently, we buy mostly just ingredients like flour, baking powder, corn flour, butter, salt, etc, etc. With them, I've found that I can make a lot of foods. I also found that we had a lot of cheese in our foods, too, and have cut it down so much that our cheese is actually going bad before I can use it all. We make our own breads, dressings, smoothies, ice cream, cream of whatever soups, most snacks, and a lot of our own foods that we used to buy. This way, we cut out so much processed crap and because we don't buy so many of the other junk, we end up saving a ton of money and I can tell that we've been much healthier.
I definitely recommend starting out slowly because it really is a life-style change and for us, it was a huge life-style change. Because I totally believe in "eating healthy" and no diets, I encourage everyone to find their own "diet," make it theirs, and stick to it. We have found what works for us, we're eating healthy with ingredients that I can identify and pronounce, and loving the foods we eat.
Also, I found natural meat, or whatever, at our local Harmon's grocery. I'm sure there's got to be something similar where you are - more expensive but it tastes so much better. Actually, I tell Mike that the chicken smells so good raw that I feel like I could eat it. Oh, and we only actually have meats in our meals two or three times a week - part of our eating healthier. But I totally feel the same way about tenderloins, which is funny, because I don't really think it's necessarily better. :)
So that's my novel. Good luck with it - it's all worth it!
I love it, Kim! Do you have any good websites for making the breads, dressings, etc? I totally agree how it's all about making it your own!
DeleteI buy farm fed meat, look for grass fed and free range on the labels. I also make sure I do that for dairy too because honestly the problem with non free range is that they are fed corn which is injected with so much crap, so we cut out a ton of corn products. We kind of do paleo but we still do beans and dairy (free range) but we dont do wheat because its another thing that I think they put lots of crap in. My four year old has autism and I have graves disease, and doing clean eating has been a huge help to both of us. I have read a lot of health forums about this stuff and decided what my family needed to do. We cut out wheat, dyes, and corn, (kids still eat corn chips sometimes, but nothing with corn syrup in is, which is in a lot of things, Monsanto and corn is just scary to me). And we try to go free range on everything and for pork you want to also find uncured pork, its by far the healthiest way to go (from what Ive researched). I find free range at winco and Target so Im sure other stores carry them too. Just look for the labels. Hope that makes sense! Good luck! Its a fun but hard lifestyle change to make. But seeing the results for my family has made it so worth it to me.
ReplyDeleteAwesome advice! I hadn't even thought about a lot of that. Did you do most of your research from forums? Or did you find some particular websites more helpful?
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