Healthy changes part 1

I posted a little bit about this last year but I thought it was worth repeating some of it. I have been very interested in a more healthy and natural lifestyle for the past year. I was prompted to look into better foods when I prayed for some way to help Jon with his depression and anxiety. I felt like we had tried everything. And believe me the list is extensive. I have always been into natural methods of healing and we have tried a lot of those. But I have never looked into nutrition too much until I was prompted to change what we are putting into our bodies. I never thought we ate too terribly. We exercise and we don't eat out a lot. I thought we could use a few more fruits and vegis. And that is when I was driving down the road and there was a car in front of me that said "greensmoothiegirl.com" I thought I should go see that website. I read some of the website, bought the Green smoothie book, we read it and decided to started making green smoothies. I was always one to sneek some vegis into our smoothies. But this was doing half greens and half fruits. We researched blenders and bought a really nice one and we have had our green smoothies several days a week for the last year.

I thought I still needed to learn more and I kept getting this overwhelming feeling that we needed to eat more of what God put here on the earth for us. Follow the word of wisdom more carefully. But I really didn't know how. We would change some things here and there. And then I would read a book and get really overwhelmed at all of the information out there and I would think I am never going to be able to change. It is so hard to change and it is so time consuming and I don't know how to do it all. But then I would get prompted once again to look into this or that and try harder. So I persisted and I kept trying to do my best, when I could, to learn and try healthy recipes and buy healthy snack foods.

Winter has always been a hard time of year for me and Jon. We seem to get a little bit sad about the cold weather. We are more tired and lazy. A couple of months ago I felt this coming on. And so I prayed and I was prompted to look into help or medicine. I didn't feel right about taking the medicine a doctor told me to take and so I prayed again and again my answer was to keep trying to learn and live a more whole foods diet. And this time I was serious. I went to several health food stores. My two favorites are Real Foods Market and Good Earth. I have learned so much from people at both of these stores. There is a wealth of information out there just waiting for people to want to change.

One day I was on the phone with a lady at Good Earth and I said "I wish someone could just lay it all out for me, this is what you need to buy and here are the recipes." the nice lady on the phone said, "Oh, my friends website has a menu plan that includes a shopping list. She is vegan but it is easy to add meat or dairy to her recipes." I went to the website which is simplehealthytasty.com and checked it out. All of her recipes looked really good and really healthy and her yearly menu plan with shopping list was only $10. I thought I am going to do this, it is all laid out for me. I bought the plan at the end of December and I went shopping. The initial investment was quite steep since I had to buy a lot of new ingredients. But I have stuck to it. I am 3 weeks in and I have loved it. Her recipes are so good. We have more energy, more regular digestion, and more steady moods. I don't feel stressed about grocery shopping or the "what am I going to make for dinner" question every night. I feel like we are actually on our way to a better lifestyle. My pantry has completely changed along with my way of thinking about food and what is nourishing to our bodies. Now, just to be clear, we are not vegan or vegetarian. We believe all foods are good for our bodies but some more than others. You have to be wise about how much meat and dairy and sugar is good for your family. And when I say sugar I don't mean white refined junk sugar, I mean honey, agave, stevia or sucanat.

Obviously we are still a work in progress. And it will never be perfect. But I feel like I am doing something good for my family. I am learning how to use food that comes from the earth to nourish our minds and our bodies and it is a wonderful journey.

We went to a Green smoothie girl class last night and she said a few things that really struck a cord with me. She said she loves to teach young moms. We are the only ones that can turn this overly processed junk food world around. We can teach our kids the things people used to do with food before we had all of this processed, convinent, junk that your body can't even recognize as food around us. She also said that quote by Hippocrates: "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." All of this stuff really makes sense to me and I feel it to be true. I still think there is a lot of research to be done. To figure out what it right and what is not for my family. But that is the fun part. Learning and growing. Trying to better ourselves.

I have wanted to buy the green smoothie girls program, 12 steps to whole foods, for the past year but we just couldn't afford it. Last night after the class we decided to go in on the digital copy of the book with Jon's sister and brother in law, Colby and Alicia. I am so excited to do the 12 steps and learn more ways to be healthy.

I have so much more information to write down, some about natural makeups and facewashes. But I will have to do that at another time, it is getting late. Goodnight.