I graduated from SUNY Binghamton back in 1988 with an Undergraduate degree in Sociology and a Concentration in Human Services. Somehow, I managed to complete 4 years of higher learning without ever taking a science course. Several years later, my interest in healthy eating was growing and I decided to take “Introduction to Nutrition” at UMASS Boston. No one told me a nutrition class was not about health but about the science behind our food. I was in science phobia mode for much of the semester and don’t really remember learning anything about living a healthy life.
I am sitting in my living room at 7:30 in the morning looking at my nicely decorated Christmas tree. My honey is sleeping and Fenway is waiting patiently by the front door, a sure sign she is ready to go out for a walk. I love a quiet, lazy morning with time to reflect, relax and strategize. After the walk that is!
I am not a technical person, but have been experimenting with a new app called Productive. The free version let me track 3 habits that I wanted to incorporate into my life and I had so much fun (and success) doing that, that I asked for a 1 year subscription for Christmas. So now I can track unlimited habits and am enjoying the process. This is not a review of Productive, there are a bunch of apps available to help develop good habits and increase productivity; this is just the one I stumbled upon, liked the look of and decided to check out.
I have been hanging out in Florida this week with Mother Fran and Child #7. The weather has been ok but regardless, it has been nice to get away from the cold and the snow. They live in what feels like a pretty congested area with busy roads full of traffic and every store you can think of within a 10 minute drive. Usually I would hate this type of area but they have something I crave with every ounce of my being. They live on the water. Don’t get too excited, it isn’t the ocean or even a lake; they live on a small pond. They share the pond with a bunch of other houses, each one faces the pond with their back porch.
Mom’s back porch is screened in and the entire thing overlooks the pond. It has a table and chairs, small couch and comfy chair. You can also walk out the porch door and set up a lounge chair on the grass when the need overtakes you. You can’t swim in this pond or even toss in your kayak (apparently that is frowned upon) but people do fish and enjoy the view.
If I ask you to close your eyes and picture a salad – what do you see?
Some of you are picturing a simple wedge of iceberg lettuce with dressing poured over it. Some of you are picturing lettuce topped with a few vegetables like tomatoes and carrots. In my house growing up, salad was some type of green leafy vegetable topped with tomato, carrot, cucumbers and onion. Everybody knows salad is healthy and good for you. But it doesn’t have to be boring.
With the exception of eating out on occasion, we cook and eat pretty much all meals from scratch. Needless to say, there is a lot of chopping, dicing, peeling, and mixing going on in my kitchen. Once the prep work is done I am sauteing, roasting, baking and frying my food until it is ready to devour. I read plenty of articles that say that it is expensive to eat real food. That one reason people eat prepared foods, fast food and junk food is because it is cheaper than healthy food.
I can’t quite wrap my head around that argument.
Prepared food, fast food and junk food are not in the same category as real food. They contain copious amounts of sugar, salt, hydrogenated oils and refined flour. Folks who subsist on this “food” are often overfed but undernourished. They take in too many calories but don’t get adequate nutrition. Did you know you can be morbidly obese and malnourished at the same time? When we eat like this we are gaining weight but starving for the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients that our bodies require for health. Over 60% of us are considered overweight in this country.
Any change in eating habits can be easily derailed by a stressful day, bad news, hunger pangs or brownies that keep calling you from the cabinet. It is time to do some preparation in order to get ready for our Whole30 that begins on January 1st. Are you ready to get healthy? In my last post, I asked you to join me in choosing health! My first recommendation is to remove all food from your refrigerator and kitchen cabinets that you will be eliminating on the Whole30 eating plan.
You would think this would be easy but you will need to read the ingredient label on every box, can and bag of food in the house! Watch out for sugar in your spaghetti sauce, soy in your canned tuna fish and sulfites in your vinegar. In this post I wrote about unexpected places you might find sugar lurking in your kitchen.
Box up the brownie mix, flour, sugar, cereal, oatmeal along with the 10 boxes of pasta that were on sale 5 for $5 bucks. No sugar and grains for the month of January! Give away the mayonnaise made with canola oil, the crackers with soybean oil, half and half as well as the blocks of cheddar. We won’t be eating vegetable oils or dairy.
I thought eliminating pasta would be tough… No big deal!
My honey and I have had several conversations about what we will do when our 30 days are over. Overall, we both feel good eating this way and don’t feel the need to permanently reintroduce any of the food groups that we eliminated (soy, legumes, sugar, vegetable oils, dairy, and grains).
That being said, I am confident I will eat the occasional slice of pizza, brownie and grilled cheese sandwich. I will need to reintroduce these favorite foods in a manner that will allow me to tell if they have a noticeable impact on my energy, my digestion or my sleep. Number 9 says when he reintroduced corn he realized it caused itchiness and some increased irritability.
Everyone knows vegetables are good for you. Everyone knows we should eat them everyday. How many did you eat today?
The more I read, the more convinced I am that not only are they good for you, they are critical for maximizing health. Eating a lot of vegetables is good, eating a wide variety is even better.
Vegetables contain different vitamins, nutrients and phytonutrients which are important for overall health. Overall, vegetables are low in calories and high in nutrients. That is a win-win! According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “eating more fruits and vegetables adds nutrients to diets, reduces the risk for heart disease, stroke, and some cancers, and helps manage body weight when consumed in place of more energy-dense foods”.
