Starting A New Chapter - Our Journey To Healthier Eating Begins

I have to say that I'm truly excited to start this new chapter. In the past, when it's come to food related changes, I've never held any 'excitement'. I've set goals, but no true excitement about change.

But this time I am truly excited to start this new chapter in our lives. My friend Emily from The Kailo Clipboard  was doing an awesome giveaway of  100 Days of Real Food.  I entered and I won.

I pretty much read the entire book in one day. This was EXACTLY what I was looking for - no gimmicks - no restrictive food groups - basically just eating healthy REAL food (which means no highly processed food). 

I started reading labels of the foods in my house. The reality is pretty much everything in my house is highly processed. That is pretty much all we eat. I decided not to 'toss' our entire pantry, but instead replace the items with healthy items instead. So I imagine it will take us 6-8 weeks to clear out most of the highly processed things. We often shop at SAMs so I have huge vats of highly processed food. 

I had a light bulb moment. I've known this for awhile, but shredded cheese contains wood pulp to keep it from clumping. I continue to use it ... well... because I'm too lazy to shred cheese. And it's like I heard myself say "Amy, you are feeding your kid wood pulp because you are simply too lazy to take a few extra moments and shred a block of cheese." That was one of my 'wow' moments. And then I looked at what Lil Man eats in a day. Almost every food he eats is highly processed. That was enough for me to realize that we need to make a change, and that honestly it's not that I just feel like I should make a change. But I actually want to make a change. 

And we started today. We are loosely following the 14 week plan to 'ease' into eating real food. The first week is adding 2 fruits and/or veggies to each meal. I had Lil Man help me this morning with food prep and before he ate his highly processed waffle, he had a half of a banana (and asked for more), along with some peaches and a few raisins. That was motivation enough for me to realize this is exactly what we need to do. 

Hubby also had some mandarin oranges and some banana with his breakfast.  I also packed 2 fruits for everyone's lunch. I personally had blueberries and a banana also with my breakfast. 

This time the decision to try to make some changes to our diet is not so that I can lose weight, or restrict my diet from ever having ice cream or chocolate, or it being a short-term thing. This decision feels really good. And the only results that I am expecting to see is that my family is mostly eating healthy real wholesome food. 

Our journey to healthier eating begins... 

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