Real Food

I have always kept a keen eye on what my family eats. I used to do organic, but it gets so costly with a family of five. I do when I can. My latest move is to eliminate processed foods. This is the slightest change that I feel has made the most impact on all of our lives.

Within the last few months I had one doctor say you need to eat a Paleo diet and the other said it should definitely be an alkaline diet. I bought books on both and was overwhelmed. This was so confusing to me. I don't eat beef and pork which are the bulk of eating Paleo. So, by default I thought to follow the alkaline way of eating.

I could never seem to get through the alkaline book and truly follow it. Therefore my pH is still lower than I would like. One of the simplest things I have done to implement an alkaline state is to add lemon to my water. With the other stuff, my family is always dueling (well, not literally) over what's for dinner. I decided just to cut out all processed foods. My general rule is if the earth or I didn't make it then you can't have it. For the most part, everyone is eating their dinner. This didn't happen before.

We are eating more whole foods. I still don't have it down to perfection, but I am on the beginning of that journey. I would really love to cut out bread completely. The girls do like sandwiches for lunch, but I just can't get myself to make my own bread. One day!

A really great resource is 100 Days of Real Food by Lisa Leake. She is such an inspiration. For the last six weeks I have been making most of our meals from scratch. It doesn't seem to take that much more time than using processed or prepared foods (although I never used many processed foods when cooking previously). Meal planning sure does help in this process.

Some of the changes I noticed for me was better skin, less moody, no discomfort during menstruation, eczema is gone, unintentionally lost weight eating well, no snacking, no food cravings, better sleep, and just overall feel better. Improvements in my girls are less moody and irritable, no food cravings (especially for sugar), better concentration, asking for fruit, better behaved and attitude. My husband claims no changes with him yet he lost 6 pounds without dieting.

I think there is something to eating real whole food!