Changing our Views Changed our Weight

We’re not one of those “will there be anything at the potluck that WE can eat?” families, but we’ve found over the past year that it really IS easy to change your family’s food (without ruining everyone else’s day) if you’re passionate about doing so. We realized pretty early on in this journey that you don’t have to be super passionate about it, and you don’t have to make a change big enough for anyone else to notice. Much like Dave Ramsey’s “Debt Snowball” (something we’re still trying to perfect), the tiniest bit of passion that you use to ask questions about the foods you currently eat will most likely inspire you to be more passionate and ask more questions. If you’re anything like Matt and I, your questions will quickly become about the foods you are NOT eating…yet. What should I be eating that I’m not? How can I afford different foods? What changes are realistic for my family’s schedule? Why am I interested in making a change? What are people I know doing that I like? That I don’t like?

Our desire for this blog is twofold. We are realizing that while simply living the cards we’ve been dealt over the past year, we are in a state of nutritional transition. My husband and I have lost a combined 120 pounds (not just from changing nutrition of course), and we’ve been able to get our son through 6 months of mostly organic, homemade finger foods. If I had told a friend from 2 years ago that I planned on changing my way of eating to what we’re doing now they would have laughed hysterically and then said, “You’re acting strange. Do you need a Big Red (red soda for you Yanks) and some BBQ?” It saddens me a little that we don’t have any record of the transition that took place in our lives. All the little memories we’ve made while maneuvering farmers markets, talking to farmers and ranchers, and ATTEMPTING to grow strawberries for our parrot will have to live on as just memories. There is no tangible record of our recent changes. We’d like this blog to serve as a chronicle for the changes that are yet to be seen. Alternatively, our hope is that we inspire others to question their food. We aren’t trying to convince you to come to the Dark Side. We are totally fine if you eat fast food cheeseburgers every day (something we did not too long ago) and tear them into bite-sized pieces for your little ones. We just noticed that something in our lives had great room for improvement, and for us that was the food we were putting into our bodies.

Sometimes we still happily eat out at restaurants, enjoy a late night trip to grab a sundae, or drink an entire day’s worth of calories in one sugary drink. The biggest difference for me is that I rarely feel guilty about these not-so-healthy decisions now. We know that we’re feeding our bodies better than ever before. We are also starting to notice the physical reactions our bodies have to some of our guiltiest pleasures. Educating ourselves on the foods available to us hasn’t been completely easy (Did you know that it is illegal to market the selling of raw cow’s milk in Texas? Matt and I have felt a bit like crack addicts trying to shadily ask around at farmers markets, “Do you know where we can get some raw milk?”), but we’ve been able to take back part of our lives by doing so. We don’t feel like food addicts anymore, and we want to make your food education journey less difficult by sharing our knowledge every step of the way.