From My Kitchen to Yours
Wow! It’s already February! I feel like my year is just getting started on the right foot. January was a month of change in our household and I was very focused on this change, so I missed writing a January newsletter. I have now come up for air and I’m ready to get going with 2022!
As we start this year off, I am really focused on healthy eating. So much of how we feel is dependent on what we eat. And to that end, not just what we eat, but how we eat and why we eat. So, from my kitchen to yours, I’m going to share with you what my family has been going through in our house for the past month…
I thought I was a healthy eater and I thought I fed my family well. Eating healthy is very much a part of who we are as a family and who I am as a person who strives to live a healthy life. We cook fresh, home cooked meals 6 days a week, including lunch and dinner. And as much as I like dessert and alcohol, I try to consume them in moderation.
When one of my family members developed a chronic condition that hadn’t been solved with conventional medicine, I decided to seek alternative health practitioners and found a wonderful Chinese medicine doctor and Acupuncturist. When we went to visit her the first thing she talked about was food, gut health and digestion. She asked us what we ate and how we ate. When I listed some of the foods that we eat, I realized that we do eat quite a bit of processed food/store bought food – more than I thought we did! And I also realized that I had practically given up on trying to get my kids to eat vegetables, especially green vegetables.
It was incredible how it took this Chinese Medicine doctor telling us what we should be eating and what we shouldn’t be eating to actually get us to realize that we can take our health to whole new level. And hearing it from an outsider convinced my kids that they need to be changing the way they eat as well. The session was worth every penny!! We walked out of that session thinking about food in a completely different way.
In addition to seeing the Chinese Medicine doctor, I also consulted with my friend and Nutritional Therapist, Sondra Cleghorn, who I wrote about in my December newsletter. I consulted with her back in December and she has been a wealth of knowledge for me and has been a tremendous help to us on this journey.
We sat down as a family and we discussed how we’re going to make this transition and what we are committing to. Much to my surprise, everybody agreed to it! Everybody felt they could benefit from it and were willing to give it a try.
So, we embarked on this new health journey together.
It’s now been four weeks and I’m not gonna lie - it hasn’t been a cake walk!
At the beginning of January, feelings of overwhelm started creeping in, and I realized that the first thing I needed to do was to clear my path forward, remove all the things that might get in the way of a successful shift. So, I dedicated a couple of hours one day, while the kids were at school and I went through my pantry. I threw out everything that was processed! All of the cereal, the crackers, the bars, the chips, the Pirate’s Booty, the popcorn and the packaged goods. It was so cathartic! It felt so good to clear out the cupboards to make room for our new way of eating.
I then browsed the web for recipes and new dishes that I can cook and I found that meal kits were the simplest way for me to transition into this new way of eating and incorporate the foods that had been missing from our diet. I subscribed to Sunbasket and Good Eggs, two food service companies that focus on fresh, locally sourced food from regenerative farms (serving my environmental consciousness).
I now cook a balanced breakfast for my kids with eggs, sweet potatoes and sautéed spinach with a fruit (Cara Cara oranges have a ton of fiber and are packed with vitamin C).
Lunch is still leftover dinner with a fruit, nuts and a homemade snack.
And for dinner I’m adding kale, spinach or broccoli to everything!!! And guess what? My kids are lapping it up!!
These new healthy habits are slowly taking shape. I see it in the way my kids are making healthy choices for snacks. Instead of reaching for Pirates Booty or ice cream they are choosing, fried eggs, nuts or sweet potatoes! (I am not kidding!)
My husband and I are feeling more energized, less sluggish and less tired. It was really about having the foods we wanted to eat readily available and forming habits. I have worked in cooking breakfast into my morning routine and I have also worked into my dinner prep always pulling out a green vegetable to add to the meal.
This is just the start for us. But it took building new habits into my daily routines to make it a core action and make it a sustainable way of eating. Next, I’m on to fermented foods!
If I was to summarize the steps it took to make this transformation, it would be the following:
1. A committed support system: This undertaking was one that required the whole family to commit to. It is so important to have the people in your life supporting your choices, even if they are not making them themselves. Talk to your people and help them understand why you are on this journey, so they can be there for you when you need them.
2. Prioritizing: My family’s health is the number one priority. Without our health we don’t have the energy to live our lives the way we want to. Keeping these changes top of mind and at the forefront of what you do, will help the changes become part of who you are and what you do (eat).
3. Removing Barriers to our success: By clearing out the pantry so there were no temptations at our fingertips, helped us to prevent sabotage. This is the starting place. Set yourself up for success not sabotage.
4. Making it Habitual: Building these changes into my routines over the course of 4 weeks have made it just what I do now. It required me to wake up a little earlier in the morning to cook breakfast for my kids and to spend a little bit of time finding new meals to cook and making/baking everything from scratch. But after a few weeks, I found my stride and I know we will not go back to the old way of eating.
5. Acknowlegement: I am so proud of my family for stepping up and stepping in to our new way of eating and I tell them so. We took our eating to another level and we have all felt the benefits. Little acknowledgments along the way are so important to keep us focused on the staying the course.
I hope you found this blog post helpful if you are struggling to make changes in your life!
Healthy eating is the cornerstone to healthy living