Riley and I have finally hunkered down and truly committed to beginning a journey towards a healthy lifestyle. And I'm not talking about low-fat ice cream.
We're totally stoked. Who wouldn't want to feel better, look better, act better, think better? So, our journey began a couple months ago when we decided to join a gym. Woohoo! And we're actually still going!
The next step was cutting out high fructose corn syrup and Red 40. This made a huge difference. Riley's reflux has pretty much gone away, I have more energy (despite my extreme lack of sleep) and Julia's behavior has improved significantly.
We've also starting drinking a lot of water (reverse osmosis at that) and adding vegetables to more meals. Cutting down on sweets is another area we've been working on!
And now we're joining an organic produce co-op! I never even knew about these until recently, and in years past I didn't even really give a hoot about the fact that i was filling my body with pesticides.
Let me interject with one thing: I would much rather have a box of chocolate chip cookies than a bowl full of vegetables. At least, taste-wise. Hopefully soon, my body will begin to crave the healthy stuff over sugar. Not on top of sugar, instead of.
One of my inspirations as of late has been my new friend Heather. Her blog, The Mommypotamus, has been a great source of information on natural wellness and eating healthy.
Friday night we had our very first piece of grass fed beef! It was a ribeye steak and we paired it with a wonderful green salad. Yummy! But expensive! Organic meat from what I can tell so far, costs about 3x as much as the kind we're used to, but hopefully we'll eventually get there in our steps towards a healthy diet. And really, it's still cheaper than buying a corn-fed steak at a restaurant. I keep remembering a quote, "Pay the farmer now, or pay the doctor later." So true! We could totally look at our medical costs and say we can't afford to eat healthy, but really? Really? We can't afford not to. And as we make small changes, our health care budget will shift towards prevention instead of treatment. And we'll be enjoying, rather than enduring, healthy food (paraphrasing Heather).
Another change we've made is going to the chiropractor. Julia has gone twice and the rest of us have appointments coming up. The whole philosophy just makes sense. It's funny-- like many people, I used to think all they did was help people with back pain, and it seemed really scary. Boy have I learned otherwise! But I won't go into all of that, you can research it on your own!
I'm really looking forward to having a back yard that I can plant a garden in! I don't know the first thing about growing food, so I'll need help with that.
And here before you is my new favorite snack:
We have a long way to go, but we're really excited about getting healthy! Our bodies are the temple of God and it feels so good to finally be taking better care of it.
