Revolution!

I've been having a “food revolution” lately and I love it.  I haven’t had one of those in a few years, now, so I think we’ve been due for a nice change in diet.  There have been new recipes, more strides towards healthier choices, and new subjects to be educated in.  This is not new for me or my family, but as I said … it’s been awhile since we’ve had a “surge.”  So far the new recipes, flavors, and ideas have been met with resounding support and vigorous “let’s have this again’s!”  I couldn’t be prouder. 

It’s been so good for me to get back into the kitchen after such a long time away. –you know what I mean … I’ve been stuck in the “what-are-we-throwing-together-in-15-minutes-or-less-tonight-because-I-don’t-really-want-to-be-doing-this” dance.  That’s not how I operated before our move into this HUGE home (well … a lot larger then the 800-ish square feet that we lived in for 10+ years), but it’s a pattern I fell into as a result of being exhausted, sick (literally), and just plain ‘ole overwhelmed.

Here’s my most recent challenge:  MORE whole ingredients in what I cook. 

Now, for those of you that know me (and my cooking), you’re probably thinking “don’t you already do that?”  It is simply not good enough for me anymore.

I don’t like eating food that’s been processed and manufactured and I don’t like feeding it to my children.  It’s supposed to be bigger and better and stronger, but the reality is that science is playing with something that should be simple and natural.  Our bodies weren’t constructed to handle all the meddling we’ve done with our food supply.  I’m case. In. Point.  There’s NO WAY vegetable gums aren’t processed, modified, and altered; despite the fact that they are “technically” organic and all natural.  (They’re plant derived.  That’s about it.  I feel pretty secure in saying that you won’t find a field of vegetable gum growing anywhere.)  I understand that some gums are incredibly helpful to those with legitimate gluten allergies and sensitivities, and I’m happy that the alternative exists for them to use.  Aside from that … should we really be eating this?  I wonder how additives and the like can possibly be good for us when they are manufactured in a Plant instead grown and nourished.

Of course, we all know I like to pick on vegetable gums but this really applies to all additives everywhere.  I understand that without them shelf life wouldn’t be long enough to exercise the convenience of buying some products on our grocery store shelves.  I understand that some items would be more expensive without the aid of more inexpensive additives to thicken/color/crisp/and what-ever the hec else.  I *get* these things.  But … I don’t have to like them, do I? 

All that said, it’s incredibly difficult to purchase non-processed, non-modified, actual food ingredients when you’re on a family budget.  Already my food bill is pretty ridiculous. If I continue down this road it’s only going to get worse.  I know that I have to strike a balance in all of this, somewhere, and I’m trying to find where my new line in the sand is.  My hope is that the more I strive towards this cooking/eating lifestyle, the more easily these nutritious and wholesome foods will fill up the bottomless pits I call my *children. 

*Side note: My children, in an unfair twist of fate, are both so skinny that it’s sometimes difficult to find pants that are both affordable *and* don’t fall off of them.  My daughter owns *no* skirts or dress pants for the sole reason that we’ve yet to find any that actually stay on her waist.  I’m not kidding.  Now, before you go judging me and thinking that I don’t feed them enough (some people think I’m a little crazy when it comes to food - hahaaa!), they’ve been known to eat both my husband and I under the table.  (Ok.  It’s not hard to eat more than I do.  I’m 5’ 7”, 145 lbs, get full fast (lately), and have a very slow metabolism… but my husband is 6’4” and cuddly.  Seriously.  They eat more than he does.  Frequently!)  If you don’t believe me, come over for dinner just before they hit a growth spurt.  I promise you they eat like squirrels just before winter hits; chubby cheeks and all!

B12 ... Bingo!

Recently a friend’s mother discovered she was so deficient in B12 that it didn’t even register in her blood test.  It has, of course, had a pretty large impact on her health but her Dr.’s are working to remedy the problem.

This got Ryan and I wondering … How does one get B12?  I found similar information in several places, but I like how healthaliciousness.com lays it out.  The top 5 food sources include shellfish, liver, fish, fish, and octopus.  I can’t eat things from the ocean (to put it simply) so that leaves me with liver and I just don’t think I can do it.  Liver is one of those foods I choose to judge, partly, based on appearance.  I don’t want to touch it and can’t even contemplate eating it.  So, I look further down the list and finally see beef, lamb, cheese, and eggs.  The average week doesn’t hold a large bounty of red meat for me and my family; My husband and I discovered long ago that we felt better when we cut a lot of that out of our diets.  I also eat the very occasional porkchop; every little bit helps, right?  It’s at this point that we started to get worried … are we getting enough B12 in our diets?  Could this be a partial culprit in my always flagging energy?  We were somewhat comforted to see that cheese and eggs round out this top 10 list.  (I’m usually careful not to over-indulge, but we *do* love our cheeses!)  I’m left, now, to wonder if I should start having my family take B12 supplements and little worried about ensuring this is in our diets.  Should I make fish and *shellfish for the family and simply not eat it?  Is it right for me to deprive them of such a healthy food just because I cannot have it?

Fitsugar.com alleviates some of my fears.  This site notes that you only need 2.4 mcgs (microkillograms) of B12 per day.  It further states that 1/2 cup of fortified breakfast cereal gives you, low and behold, 2.4 mcgs!  Yogurt, milk, and chicken are also listed as good sources for this vitamin.  I’m suddenly less concerned about my children because they drink 1-2 glasses of milk every day, love yogurt for snack, eat cereal at least once a week, and we all eat chicken once or twice every week or two.  I can’t eat most yogurts, and the one’s I can eat tend to be too expensive to seriously contemplate purchasing on a family budget.  I don’t typically drink a glass of milk all on its own, either.  I get my dairy other ways (refer to cheese loving and cereal).  Maybe I don’t have anything to worry about, though.  Maybe my fatigue is caused by other deficiencies, health problems, or not enough sleep!  I really don’t know, but the next time I have blood drawn, I’d like it tested, please.  It all gets so overwhelming, doesn’t it?  My paranoia can’t handle the unknown.

*O.K., while I *could* make fish for my family, the thought of shellfish in my kitchen is frightening.  Someone else would have to prepare it and then sanitize the kitchen and all dinnerware that the shrimp touched.  I place a high value on my ability to breathe!

The Beginning

Almost 11 years ago, after my oldest was born I was vastly overweight, uncomfortable, unknowledgeable, and needing to change.  I didn’t know very much, but through the help of friends and the internet I started to learn what I needed to do, more than go on a diet, was to change my diet.  Tater tots and steak sauce might be a tasty dinner but definitely *not* the key to a healthy life.  My husband and I decided to start with small changes like switching from white flour tortillas to wheat and taking away our precious potatoes and easy pasta.  (Yes.  For several years, the potato was not welcome in my home.   <gasp!>)  We stopped buying our beautiful pre-made calorie laden frozen chicken kiev’s, no more high-calorie juices, chips, and white processed bread.  We discovered *we loved* fresh spinach, lean turkey, and refried black beans, among other foods.  I lost my 40 pounds of baby weight as well as that additional 20 that I <cough cough> might have needed to lose in the first place.  Little by little, over the ensuing 2 years, we changed and we loved it.  Of course, now that I absolutely loved the new slim trim me, I did what any sane mother of a toddler would do … I got pregnant again … On purpose.  Here enters another 50 pounds of unwanted weight; when a potato is the only thing that stays down- you eat it, and when you want warm gooey chocolate chip cookies you’re husband knows he should go and get them for you, even if you’ve had them every day that week. It was lucky for me that I now knew what it was like to shed the pounds and feel so free.  It took me about a year, but I managed to do it again.  (I’d like to take this time to emphasize that I’ve experienced, roughly, 60-70 pounds of weight loss.  I *know* it isn’t easy.  I *know* what it’s like.  I may vary within 10 pounds depending on my health, but I’ve kept the bulk of it off!!)  I digress … Back to my story … After the original weight loss, I was feeling footloose and fancy free!  We continued our slow education on processed food and what we might, perhaps, be better off not eating.  We had just decided to start taking away “high fructose corn syrup” (among other things) and were beginning to do things like add flax seed to our homemade pizza dough and venture into the world of fish when we discovered that I had some major food allergies. 

I already knew that I couldn’t have shellfish (instant anaphylactic reaction) or peanuts, but this … this was huge.  Over the next couple of years, I discovered that my world of can’t have’s included flax, fish, and nuts; the big one’s in Omega 3 nutrition.  Omega 3’s.  I had been steadily adding *all* of those to my diet!  Y’know, those things that EVERY person in the world of health and fitness that is worth their salt will tell you that you *must* eat!  What!?  Wait!  There’s more!  Flax, nuts, and fish cause me distress but an additive known as vegetable gum is nearly as scary as shellfish.   Vegetable gum is a real game changer and there isn’t much information out there about it.  At first I read all my food labels like any studious individual would.  The Allergist had told me to simply avoid fast food and sauces but I noticed I was still coughing when I ate and very rarely seeing “vegetable gum” listed in ingredient’s lists.  I googled and googled and googled and found nothing helpful.  Eventually, desperation and sheer determination finally led me to the Wiki page that saved my well-being.  I wiki’d food additives and found a page listing common ones and a) what they are and b) what is in them.  It turns out that vegetable gum is an ingredient *in* an ingredient; many, many ingredients; 41, to be exact.  Vegetable gum is an organic thickener and emulsifier.  I began to re-read those food labels and realized: It.  Is.  In.  Everything.   We were lucky that we had changed our diets so drastically over the years because that meant that there was no HUGE earth-shattering food overhaul in our home.  Of course there were *some* revelations on certain items, but eliminating the hordes of processed foods that we once ate and replacing them with more whole ingredients had been such a stroke of genius that it bordered on massive cosmic foresight.  The more labels I read, the more foods I avoided, the more I made from scratch, the better I felt.  After I eliminated nuts, flax, fish, and vegetable gum from my diet I realized that I felt great!  I had no clue that I hadn’t been feeling well before, but the difference was amazing.  Who knew that I only needed my inhaler when I ate something I was allergic to!?  Who knew that a person could live without an upset stomach, heartburn, or indigestion!?  Not me!  Needless to say this new discovery put a semi-permanent hold to our slow and deliberate elimination of unnecessary foods because when so many foods are taken out of the mix, you sometimes veer towards whatever the hec you can find to replace them.   Not to worry, though!  An added bonus to my additive allergies is that many of those “bad foods” are automatically eliminated.

The real problem was, is, and always will be:  eating other people’s food and eating at restaurants.   I don’t like to be a pain, a bother, or ask for/expect special consideration from people, so you can imagine how fun I find it to hassle my server or party host.  The other problem is that while I’ve come a long way in my education of food, I have so very very far to go.  The information out there, the quick tips, how to’s, and try me’s are simply not as helpful as they should be.  The average “top 25 things to eat for a better you” is, typically, 50% useless for me.   I can’t eat most yogurts, can’t ease that ice cream craving by grabbing a skinny cow treat, that salmon is not the best idea for me to ingest, and I can’t eat most multi-grain breads.   I *love* my Eat Clean cookbook, by Tosca Reno, but at least half that book contains items I’m allergic to.  No, Tosca, I’m sorry, but I cannot add flax to that.  Those gums might be great for most people to add to that recipe, but it is, in fact, *not* healthy for me to eat them.  Shrimp?  No thank you, I’d like to live.  Fish?  Can’t trust that either.  Nuts?  Nope, I’d have to be to eat them!   I have a family to take care of, a house to keep clean, and a life outside of food, so I can’t be a gourmet all natural 5-star chef, either.  I need easy, real, quick, delicious, healthy food with the occasional 5-star meal thrown in.  I do pretty well at it now, but I think I can do better.

In addition to my crusade on healthier living through food, I joined a gym 5 years ago.  I only lost about 5 pounds, but I shed nearly 2 pant sizes.  Now, I’m 35 years old and currently weigh what I did in high school.   A lot of people assume that I’ve always been blessed with this, but I assure you I have the pictures to prove I have not!!  My health has taken some hits and is *still* somewhat preventative of much of the working out that I used to love but I’m trying to the best that I can.  Most of my “super skinny clothes” don’t fit right now and I’d sincerely like to turn that around.  We’ll see if I can make that happen soon, but I’m determined to keep trying. I see this as just another step on the ladder I’m ever so slowly climbing.  Only now, I’m fueled by more than a desire to lose weight and be healthy.  My family almost lost me, recently, and I don’t want more close calls like that.  Not now.  I want to be strong, alive, and actively loving my family for years to come.

I don’t plan to stop reading other people’s philosophies and ideas for healthy eating, but I’m also starting MY way of eating.  This will record MY experiences and MY thoughts.  I plan to share MY ideas and hope you will too!  I have a lot to learn still and you can learn with me, help educate me, or simply laugh and be entertained