Wednesday, February 5, 2014

I Never Meant For It To Come To This

We have completed Day 3. I have to give kudos to my husband. He woke up late this morning so did not get his breakfast, he then left his lunch at home, he had no money, his phone is broken so I couldn't text him to see if I could come bring him his lunch, and then he went straight to someone's house to paint their basement. It had all the makings of eating something not on "the list." Thankfully someone at work owed him lunch and he was able to buy a chicken breast. Good job Brad!

Both of us have been feeling fine. By fine I mean, no different than before. I've heard that we would feel really bad for a couple weeks. I've had moments where I'm not feeling "the best." Tired, some abdominal pain but nothing bad. Brad said he feels just like he did every other day. Maybe the worst is coming yet.

The worst part for me is mid-afternoon. I start craving food. Tuesday I went into work and there were cinnamon rolls, candy, and the last piece of chocolate peanut butter bacon pie. I had brought the last piece to work last week for everyone to try but they had forgotten to eat it. I had the pleasure of watching them all eat it and tell me how amazing it was. It pains me to even type this. I want a bite! After I left work I had a couple errands to run. The worst part of living where we do is that there are restaurants at every turn.

Here is what was going on in my head:

"Five Guys....I want a burger and fries!"
"Dickeys......mmmmm, BBQ!"
"I just want a cookie!"
"I just want to eat real food. Oh wait, I am eating real food. I want fake food!"

I haven't been eating much fruit but today I gave in and needed something sweet. I made a strawberry mango smoothie. After not having sweets for a couple days, even that tasted REALLY sweet.

So, how did all this craziness begin?

I won't bore you with all the details but for about a year I've wanted our family to be healthier but frankly food bores me. Well, unless it's tasty and going in my mouth. What I mean by it bores me is that I don't really understand all the science of it. What is healthy and what isn't. To me Sun Chips were healthy because hey, they are better than Cheetos right? Yogurt is healthy because it's dairy, even though it's loaded with sugar. Really, I just didn't know where to begin. Packaged food is easy. If I buy what everyone likes, I don't have to hear a bunch of complaining. And honestly, I just didn't know where to start.

Did you know if you add spices to your meat it tastes good? Yep, no canned items needed. It's amazing the things you learn!

Over the past year I have seen friends start a healthy lifestyle and it intrigued me.

The beginning of January a Facebook friend posted a video and it showed up on my feed. I was set to have Brad and I start counting calories again. But in this video it talked more about "what" you eat, now "how much" you eat. Really? It's not about how many calories you are eating but are you putting healthy food into your body? Who knew?

I talked to Brad about it, asked him to watch the video. Of course, his response was, "Give me the Cliff notes." So I did. He didn't argue about eating healthier, so I started to pursue it.

A friend of mine had started eating Paleo in the fall and so I asked her about it and just asked for resources for recipes. She told me to read a book called "It Starts With Food" by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig. Hey, it must be a good book, Melissa wrote it. I had told my friend that I really just wanted to cut a lot of the sugar that we eat out of our diet. But I didn't want to get all crazy cutting dairy out and wheat. I never meant for it to go this far.

I headed to the local library and checked out the book and the rest is history.

The first part of the book is very sciency. I'll be honest, I hate science. Part of the reason I dropped out of college was because I was going to have to take Biology the next year. I was pretty sure I wouldn't pass. I just don't get it. So, I admit, I skipped over some of it because it was far too mind boggling for me.

But what I did read made sense. Plus, I figured, if changing our eating habits had no effect on how we feel, then I guess we ate healthier for a month. What did we have to lose? While I was reading the book, I started looking at labels. I was startled to find that about 90% of the food in our house has sugar in it.

I will not go through everything the book says because there is no way I could sum it up. Through my blogs I think you will end up understanding what we are doing. But if you are interested in learning more, I would suggest reading the book or you can go to their website Whole9.

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