A New Way of Eating

As a family, we decided to get healthier this new year.  Not to lose weight (although that is a nice bonus) but just to focus on our health and feel better.  We didn't really eat unhealthy to begin with, but we still had things in our diet that when it came down to it was just junk.  We also liked to eat out on the weekends.  We were pretty good at eating in moderation, but I started looking closely at labels and I was shocked.  A lot of things that you would think are supposed to be healthy really aren't.  For example, Hudson had some organic veggie crackers.  I looked at the ingredients after I started reading Rick Warren's "The Daniel Plan" book and I noticed that those "healthy" crackers had over 15 ingredients in them!  Some I couldn't even pronounce.  I started looking at all our labels and noticed that a lot of things have those kinds of ingredients.  I love to cook and I cook a lot from scratch, but even so, a lot of staple foods can have all that fake stuff if you aren't careful.  Another example is when I went to the store to buy corn tortillas, there was only ONE brand that had corn, lime and water as the ingredients.  Some of them had 10 weird ingredients! I started to really feel strongly about all these additives being bad for me.  Maybe that was contributing to me waking up every morning and still feeling tired. Or having a heavy feeling in my body.  Or all the headaches I have.  I could list more and more- muscle aches, bloating, canker sores.  I know a lot of my health issues were from me following the gluten-free diet I am supposed to be doing very lightly.  And by that, I mean eating something if I wanted it regardless of if it contained gluten or not.  I was very bad about that.  I didn't do it every day, but since I have been diagnosed with Celiac Disease after a biopsy, it is something that I shouldn't do at all.  Wes was on board with changing the way we eat too, so we decided to do it as a family.  I was pretty positive about staying off gluten this time since my entire family was going to do it with me.

Yesterday was our first day.  I had completely cleaned out my pantry and got rid of anything with junk (I was pretty excited that there were only two sacks full of it!).  Another part of the Daniel Plan is eliminating ALL sugar except natural sugar like raw honey or agave.  So out went all my baking supplies except my gluten-free flour.  I am not a doctor, but from what I have read, gluten isn't good for anyone, whether you have celiac disease or not.  So I am excited to get my kids gluten-free too.  We felt really good yesterday; didn't have any intense cravings or hunger, plenty of energy and motivation.  We had cage free scrambled eggs and fruit for breakfast, I made up a chicken fajita bowl for lunch (it was great!) with shredded chicken, black beans, bell peppers, quinoa and brown rice and Mexican seasonings.  For dinner we had thin pork chops with broccoli and mashed potatoes made with the homemade chicken stock that I had from our chicken from lunch.  I made lots of snack baggies of pre-measured almonds, cashews and raisins so if we started to get hungry, we'd have a snack right there.

I am starting to feel the effects of my body letting go of all that junk today.  Last night, I couldn't sleep at all.  I felt jittery.  And today I have felt very foggy and tired.  I know this is just my body's way of handling me getting rid of all the stuff that I have been eating for years and years.  I will be glad when this part is over!!!

Today, I had one serving of steel cut oats with a banana for breakfast.  For a snack I had some roasted almonds.  Lunch, I made guacamole and made my own baked chips with 2 corn tortillas in the oven.  We are having salmon for dinner.  I really haven't been starving yet which is surprising.  I guess it really is true that if you eat the right things, you stay full!

I know a lot of people are doing this plan too or one similar.  A lot of people start the new year off trying to be healthier.  I hope our journey helps!  Please share what you are doing!  It makes it so much easier to do this with others.