The changes in our family since changing the way we eat have been amazing. I've had some changes in my health (which I'm sill working on) including losing more than 10% of my body weight. And I really feel that my skin, hair, and nails have really made a change for the better. My husband and my teenage son have both lost weight. In fact, we need to buy them new clothes! We've all had an increase in energy too.
Some of the best changes has been in the way my youngest children eat. In the last year my 4-year-old and 2-year-old had turned into very picky eaters. In fact, when I took my youngest to his checkup in December he wasn't really eating anything. No joke. The doctor went through the food groups with me:
- Vegetables? NO
- Fruits? NO
- Meat? NO
- Grains? NO, even Rice? NO
- Dairy? NO
I was really struggling with him and was just trying my best to get Carnation Instant Breakfast into him. I decided after the holidays that I had to get a handle on things so I decided to start making him smoothies thinking something new might be exciting. He loved them! I was filling them with healthy fruits, spinach, yogurt, flax seed, etc and he loved them. I was so happy that I knew I was at least getting something healthy into him. But we were going nowhere trying to get him to eat anything else. This was around the time I went to my doctor and she decided to that I needed to change the way I eat. She also recognized that my son's reflux seemed to have returned from when he was younger and that could be why he doesn't want to eat. The main thing I have had to change was for now I could not have gluten or cow dairy. This has been quite an adjustment and I'm still hopeful for the day I can add those things back into my diet.
I also went on a detox diet for 4 weeks and this is what really set into gear the change in our eating habits. Because the detox was so strict in what it allowed it has really forced us to start reading labels on everything. We've really been shocked how much junk is in so much food, even food you think is "normal" or "healthy". We started to cut our refined sugars, food dyes, and so much more. What we've really come to realize is the easiest way to do this is to make things yourself. One of the best blogs I've found that has really helped me in finding ideas to feed my family healthy, non-processed food is 100 Days of Real Food. She has so many great ideas. Also, for feeding the kids I had read about Dr. Sears idea of nibble trays. It's an amazing idea and I credit it for getting my kids to eat again. Now, less than 6 months later, my 2-year-old, loves to eat and he loves to eat so many things. There is not a meat he won't try. He's still slow on trying more vegetables, but he know I put spinach in his smoothies and veggies in the spaghetti sauce and loves it! He is really finding a love fruit too and will now eat bananas, apples, grapes, strawberries, and white peaches. He loves yogurt so much now that he will eat the plain, unsweetened yogurt.
My plan for this blog is to share our adventures in finding new healthy, real food to eat. I'll share our meal plans each week (and see how well we do with them). I'll try to share many recipes and resources and tips that I find to help feeding a family healthy foods (and on a budget). And I look forward to feedback and ideas. I think the best way to keep food interesting is to share ideas with others and the internet is great for doing this. Happy Eating!
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