What exactly ARE Real Foods??

With the sounds of March Madness filling every inch of my house (if you know my husband, you can only imagine just how LOUD it gets in here), I come to you with a mini post on what Real Foods are to me.

One of the first things I researched when I started on this new phase of my nutritional life was, ‘what exactly does it mean to eat Real Foods?’ Because I had no freaking idea. But luckily for us, we live in the age of the interwebz and I could just hop on Google and research until my heart’s content.
Which I did.
For days.
I stayed up late reading in bed, blog after blog, on Real Foods, Clean Eating, and Traditional Food diets. I was a mad woman and I think I was about a day away from Husband holding an intervention, when I finally stopped before my eyeballs fell out (Seriously. My eyes are still dry from laser surgery and they get REALLY dry from reading, especially on my iPad mini (aka BFF), and they almost really did dry up in my head. Not really. But close.)

From all my obsessive researching, I found that the truth is, Real Food can be different for everyone, based on their life circumstances, preferences, and convictions. I looked into what several bloggers defined as Real Foods for themselves and found that I probably incorporate a little bit from all of them based on my own research and convictions.

So here is the gist of my definition of Real Foods:

First, Real Foods is not the same as Whole Foods, Paleo, or Clean Eating although they all have similarities. Real Foods to me is, however, synonymous to Traditional Foods. So when I say Real Foods, I am also saying Traditional Foods and visa versa. Got it? Great!

Now that we have the terminology clear, what do the terms mean?

Real, Traditional Food means eating foods that are unprocessed, chemical free, well nourished (for animal products) and as close to it’s natural state (like right from the animal with minimal human meddling) as possible. (Just to be clear, I am not talking about the Raw Food Movement. I cook my food. A lot. Like everyday.)

So…let’s break this down.

-I eat food from all food groups…meat, dairy, whole grains, breads, vegetables, fruits, nuts, fats, and sugar…just not processed versions. (This is where Real, Traditional Foods differ from some of the other eating plans I mentioned.)
-We eat MEAT. We are in NO way vegetarians, although we do eat meatless meals if Husband isn’t paying too close attention to the meal plan. 🙂 When we do eat meat, we are striving for organic, grass-fed, pasture raised meat. (This is where the properly nourished part comes in). We try to know where our meat comes from.
-For Seafood, sustainable, wild caught is best. This includes canned seafood.
-We eat whole, full fat dairy like whole, low temperature pasteurized milk, organic whole milk yogurt, organic sour cream, whole milk cheese and raw cheese (if I can find it). I love cheese. I don’t think I could ever sign on for any eating plan that doesn’t include cheese. And I’ve been lactose intolerant since practically the womb, so you know I love it if I’m willing to throw digestive caution to the wind to eat it.
-We love eggs. Eggs are the best. Eggs have gotten a bad rap, but they are awesome! We try for organic, pastured eggs. And we eat the whole egg. Not just the egg white.
-We eat healthy fats and unprocessed oils like butter, coconut oil, and olive oil. For a cheat sheet on healthy vs processed fats, check out this printable from Weed ’em and Reap on my Pinterest Board.
-We eat sugar and use other natural sweeteners in our cooking and baking. Good examples of unprocessed sugars and sweeteners include Organic raw cane sugar, coconut sugar, local honey, real maple syrup, and pure stevia.
-Produce should be local and organic if you can. Use the Dirty Dozen, Clean Fifteen Rule for reference and do the best you can with what you have. Eat lots of produce! It’s so delicious!
-Just like cheese, I don’t think I could ever give up bread. We eat whole grains, including bread, pizza crust, brown rice, whole grain pasta and other baked goods. I use Whole Wheat flour, Whole Wheat Pastry flour, and occasionally White, Unbleached and Unbromated, Whole Wheat flour.
-Snacks. Nuts, dried fruit, veggies, fresh fruit, cheese, humus, guacamole, edamame, homemade corn chips, and homemade crackers all make great Real Food snacks. See? There are lots of delicious snacks in the Real Food World! And they are a lot more filling than most snack junk (that I used to eat by the pound!)
-Packaged Foods. I will occasionally included packaged foods like pretzels and organic cereal. If this is the case, the best rule of thumb when looking at a package is to look for no more than 5 to 6 ingredients and they should all be ingredients you can pronounce, know what it is, and could pick it up from the store and make something with it yourself. Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few packaged products that meet the criteria. You will see them on my cheat sheet shopping lists. (P.S. Pretzel Slims from Trader Joe’s are freaking awesome!)
-Desserts!! We eat dessert (and dark chocolate. Yes to dark chocolate!)! We love it. We make ice cream, cookies, brownies, pies, and other luscious things. Notice the word, make. Yes, Real Food desserts often require learning and making yourself. But it’s totally worth it. Because a life without desserts is just…depressing.

All in all, Real Foods means I am not scared of things like BUTTER and BACON and WHOLE EGGS. YUM.

This is how I eat 80% of the time. I employ the 80/20 when it comes to Real Foods, because let’s face it, I live in REALITY and reality is full of processed foods I have no control over. So the other 20% of the time I chill out max and relax all cool. Just like The Fresh Prince. What does that mean? (Well first, refresh yourself on the musical genius that is the Fresh Prince Theme Song and then keep reading…)
-I got out to eat. I eat what I like at a restaurant and let go that it may not be 100% clean, unprocessed food.
-I eat birthday cake and white crust pizza and Girl Scout Thin Mints, when I’m out and about in the world.
-I enjoy parties and family gatherings without agonizing over the menu.
-Husband eats Goldfish crackers and cheez-its and chicken wings and I am okay with it. Like I said before, he is so incredibly supportive that I don’t want to ever impose my convictions on him.

Why do I let go and eat these things 20% of the time? Because an ‘all or nothing’ attitude is a recipe for disaster and discouragement. And because the turmoil that it causes to agonize whether or not to eat them is stupid and doesn’t change the fact that when it’s in my control, I can choose wholesome, Real Foods. That gives food way more control over me than is healthy. I’ve noticed, however, since starting eating Real Foods, those foods don’t appeal to me like they used to and there is little to no turmoil or agonizing when I’m presented with the option to eat them. Those Goldfish have been in the pantry for the last two weeks and normally, it would be like they are taunting me, begging me to eat them with their little fishy mouths, but since I changed my eating, it’s like their little lips have been silenced. I’d much rather have some nuts and call it a day. Awesome how God helps armor our hearts against old demons when we decide to walk His way.

Okay friends, I think that’s about it. In the end, you have to talk with God and decide between you and Him what your food convictions are and go from there. If you decide to change your eating, in whatever way you and God choose, be sure you are doing it for the right reasons. As a woman, I can confidently say that for 99% of my life I only strived to lose weight so I could look a certain way or fit the world’s mold of what an attractive woman looks like. It ended in heartbreak and failure every time. God wants us to be healthy for His reasons, not the world’s. God desires us to be good stewards of the bodies He has given us, and to have ‘life to the full.’ He doesn’t care about appearance or dress size or skinny jeans or bikini bodies. God cares about the beauty of our hearts and spirits. God says in 1 Samuel 16:7 “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” How beautiful a truth this is. In a world that will shun a woman for a whole myriad of physical and outward reasons, God sees inside and looks at her heart. I don’t know about you, but I want a heart that is gorgeous in the eyes of my Lord. That’s my extreme makeover, not what I see in the mirror. And I know, that when my God looks at me, He sees me through the eyes of his Son, and, in Him, I am the most glorious and beautiful woman I could ever be.

God vs. The World, a battle of food and failures

Hey kiddos! How’s life?

We are currently experiencing a ThunderBlizzard so I have a SNOW DAY!! Anyone who works in the schools will tell you that Snow Days are WAY better as adults than as kids. #1 You get paid. HELLO??? #2 You don’t have to spend any time catching up on the homework you should have done the night before (who else totally did this as a kid?) #3 Sleeping in as an adult has a sweetness that it never had when you were a kid. Plus you have time to blog and what not. Win, win. (I will say this probably changes once you have kids of your own. Then they are also home and there goes your sleeping in and blogging and sanity. I’ve been told the ideal situation is to work in a different district than where your kids attend school and your district closes and their’s doesn’t! I mean…No, you totally want to spend the day with your kids. You really do. You don’t desperately need a day off where you can pee in peace. Truthfully I have no clue since I’m not a parent so I’ll shut up now before I offend someone by pretending to be exhausted by my non-existent kids.) Either way, I put on my productive comfy clothes and did some laundry, am blogging, and have plans to make some homemade granola and granola bars later this afternoon.

(Is it just me or do other people have lazy comfy clothes and productive comfy clothes? To me, if I put on my oversized, mens sweatpants and a sweatshirt, I just know nothing productive is going to take place that day. I won’t even make it off the couch. BUT if I put on my yoga pants and a regular comfy shirt, there is a much greater possibility that I may accomplish something productive. No? Just me? Okay then.)

So, update on my life: my real food-ing is going awesome! I love how I feel and how much energy I have. I have not taken a mid-day nap since I started eating clean! Which is awesome (not that I don’t love napping but it really interferes with any sort of productivity) because I seriously seemed to fall into a post-lunch nap at least a couple days a week before I switched to real food. I LOVE not counting calories or obsessing over portions and just eating until I feel satisfied and then stopping. That is something I have never been able to do before. Stopping after I’m satisfied. And the best part is, I am not stressing about not counting every morsel of food that goes into my mouth because I am satisfied with so much LESS. By eating nutrient rich, real, traditional foods, I am finally feeling satisfied after a meal. I’m not obsessing over when I can eat again because I don’t feel truly satisfied and I can enjoy the fullness I feel in the moment. It’s awesome. AWE-SOME.

Just to be clear, I am not knocking counting calories or portions at all. I was able to lose 53 pounds that way! It can work for sure. I have just come to realize that there is no one eating plan for everyone and what works for me may not work for you and your body. I truly respect everyone’s individual journey to health. Seriously. I just realize now that counting calories was only another facet of my obsession with food and by fostering a system where every calorie counted, it encouraged me to cut calories where ever I could so I could eat more, not better. So I picked up anything that said Light, Low Fat, Diet, 100 Calories, Zero Calories etc. Which meant that the majority of what I was eating was overly processed, chemically laden ‘foods’ that are so far from what God intended us to eat that I’m surprised our bodies can even recognize them. (I’m starting to think they can’t.)

I see now that three years ago when I started walking this road with God, God opened my eyes to see the sin of my eating and poor stewardship of the body He had given me, and I was free to get healthy, but I tried to walk God’s way to health by eating the world’s food, using the world’s ways. Not His. That’s a recipe for failure. We can’t try to walk with God but take the world’s path to get to our destination. The world’s ways often work for a while but eventually leave us unfulfilled, unsatisfied, frustrated, and unhappy. I found myself feeling all those things these last few months. That is how the world lures us in. The world’s ways promise success and happiness…until they don’t and you need to find another thing from the world to make you feel good again. A new diet plan, a new type of food to avoid, a new cleanse to try, a new weight loss group to join. “If only I tried this…I would make it this time.” They often leave us feeling like we are the failure, not the path we chose to take. The world’s ways are tricky like that. They never seem to get a bad reputation for the flaws in their plans, we always seem to get the blame for not trying hard enough, not wanting it enough, not choosing the right things, not being good enough.

That’s why God’s way is the only way to go. We still have to do our part. We still have to make choices and want it for ourselves and try hard when temptation strikes, but God’s way keeps it’s promise. God’s way always fulfills, satisfies, and brings lasting victory. God’s way give us the strength we need to make the right choices, try hard even when we don’t feel like it, and provides a way out when temptation strikes (1 Corinthians 10:13). The world, it seems, wants us to fail so that we will feel the need to buy the newest workout program, subscribe to the newest diet tip service, or whatever else they can get us to say yes and open our wallet to. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of the world’s ways. I’m tired of the promises that this (insert product/diet/program) will be the key to my weight loss and health…only until the next version comes out and then they change their minds and say “no wait, THIS one is really it!” I want God’s plan, God’s way, God’s help, God’s strength, God’s encouragement, God’s victory. And the best part is, I can have it and so can anyone else who truly desires it! Without “two low payments of $39.95” or a subscription fee. Yes, God’s way costs. It costs my pride, my selfishness, my weakness, my stubbornness, my sin. But, if I ask Him, God can replace all that with humility, selflessness, strength, a soft heart, and forgiveness. I won’t ever get all the money I’ve spent on the newest diet or fitness craze back, but with God, He’s already given me more than I’ve ever paid.

These are the things that this Real Food Revolution is teaching me. (Who knew I could be so insightful?? Weird, right?) I love eating foods that God envisioned for us to eat and enjoy. I love knowing that I’m nourishing my body with foods that God designed for us to nourish our bodies with! It brings me closer to Him in a weird, funny way. Like I said, please know that I only speak for myself and you have to decide between you and God what is the right eating plan for you. God made each of us different and each of our bodies different, so we all need a different plan to fit our needs.

All in all, God is good. Every day. All the time.

This is totally not what I planned to write about today but sometimes you just gotta go where your fingers take you. I will be posting in the next couple days what I actually planned to write about: the results of some new recipe experiments I tried this week and my new Real Food meal planning system!

Also…………….

I have something REALLY exciting coming in the mail this week!!! I can’t wait to tell you all about it! But i’m going to keep it a surprise until then! (I can feel your excitement building.)

❤

Molly

First Meal and Lessons in Marriage

hi friends! How are things going?? Things are going great here! Loving the real food revolution that’s happening in my house and my body!

I promised I would detail our first real food dinner, the results, and reveal who cried during the process. So here goes…

After deciding to jump head first into our new life with real food, I wanted to take the existing meal plan my hubby and I had made for the week and convert it to using real, clean ingredients. I did this because I wanted to see how well our favorite recipes would convert (I suspected pretty easily). Plus I figured keeping the menu familiar would help husband extraordinaire transition to my new real food frenzy.

So up on the docket for sunday night’s dinner was balsamic marinated chicken with Caesar salad. Super easy. I jumped online to look up a recipe for balsamic vinaigrette dressing for my marinade and caesar dressing for the salad. That was pretty much all I had to convert. I already make my own croutons (impressive, I know!) so that was a cinch. I had already been grocery shopping for a couple hours and then spent another couple hours demolishing and reconstructing both my fridge and my pantry so I was pretty beat by the time dinner prep began, and it was a prime PMS night (oh…did you not realize this was going to be one of those kind of blogs? Where we talk about everything, weird, gross, or bodily? It is. We will. So get ready for full disclosure, readers!) So to be fair, the stage was set for disaster. I had just finished putting my marinated chicken in the oven along with my croutons when I embarked on the caesar dressing. I’m not a total ‘make your own dressing’ novice so I had little to no qualms. The only thing that was strange was the anchovy paste. I am not a fan of anchovies or any type of fish paste but the recipe stated that it was critical for that classic caesar flavor. I’m not afraid of new ingredients so I grabbed some at the store and went to work. I was a little nervous that husband wouldn’t feel so adventurous about fish paste (I mean, who does feel adventurous about fish paste?). I tasted the dressing after I made it and something was off. It just didn’t taste right. I tried some experimenting and adding small amounts of things to try and balance the flavors. I did the best I could but it was time to stop fiddling and eat. I thought it was passable and I could work on adjusting it later. I mixed the salad and tossed in the dressing. I asked husband to try it. He took a piece of lettuce gingerly and placed it in his mouth like a dutiful husband.

The face he made was like the face of a child spitting out their ‘nasty’ vegetables into a half chewed heap on their plate. It was a completely involuntary look of disgust. And I lost it. For some reason, my tender feelings (already PMSing and tired) were extremely hurt even though I knew that the dressing wasn’t great either. I don’t know about you fellow wives out there, but one of my absolute favorite things in the world is feeding my husband. Maybe you think that makes me practically ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’ but it is honestly one of the greatest gifts of our marriage that I can serve him and make him happy in this way. I treasure it. And in that moment, I was a failure. Before I knew it, the tears were welling up in my eyes and husband was totally bewildered. He apologized immediately but it was too late for my tender feelings. I went into hurt, defensive (and kind of bratty) mode and proceeded to tell him he didn’t need to eat dinner if it was so gross and could make himself some chicken nuggets instead. What a mess. Sometimes I am such a mess, I can’t handle it. Even though I knew I was beyond rationality anymore, I tried to get a grip but the tearing kept coming. My incredible husband trudged through my pouting, attempted to comfort me and ate two whole plates of that salad. Two whole plates. Like a champ. And that is an even bigger and better gift of our marriage. A husband who knows how much I treasure feeding him that he will eat whatever I make for him, no matter if it’s a culinary triumph or tearful disaster. (To be fair, the salad tasted much better with the chicken on top-the marinade was awesome and helped balance the flavor of the dressing.) Marriages that have God working in the hearts of both husband and wife transform these tearful moments into some of the most treasured as we can see the silhouette of Christ in our spouse as they sacrifice for us, even by doing something as silly as eating salad. And for that, our first real food meal was a complete success. It was less about the food and more about love and sacrifice. Oh man, God using wonky caesar dressing to touch my heart. What a crafty guy He is.

We have since had several very successful and delicious clean eating meals, of which I’d love to share about (and share recipes) next time. This first week is shaping up to be awesome.

Till next time!

Molly

Real Foods! Finally!

If you came back for this second post, Thanks! It makes me feel like less of a loser.

This is the post where I will actually start sharing the start of my Real Foods journey. (Finally! I know, right??)

If you read my first post, you’ll know that a few weeks ago I was at my breaking point with feeling and looking like crap. Little did I know that God was answering my plea for help and leading me into a wonderful land full of milk and honey (literally!)!!

So here’s how it all began.

Via the ever wonderful and knowledge expanding Facebook (yes, God uses facebook. He’s cool like that), I came across a couple posts from friends that intrigued me. First was about the truth of margarine. DISGUSTING. If you like margarine, seriously, don’t look it up. I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you. I used to like it too. I know how it feels. The next was a blog about a woman’s own journey to health and happiness by eating real foods. The ideas started to click. I started reading labels, and not for calories, for ingredients. I started to realize that “light” and “low fat” are LIES. LIES, I tell you! They are foods with all the fat and calories sucked out and because they, then, taste like paste and raccoon poop, they fill them full of chemicals to make them taste good again. But those same chemicals make us crave more sweets and salt and junky food. Vicious cycle. No wonder I wasn’t ever full and satisfied. I was eating chemically altered raccoon poop and craving even more! (No, really, I wasn’t eating raccoon poop, but you get the idea.)

This new information was dizzying. The best way I can describe it is like seeing something horrible or disgusting and you can never go back to a time where you haven’t seen it. In order to try and describe it to my wonderfully patient husband when I came home with an entire car full of real, traditional foods, after promising “we would take it slow and replace our food one thing at a time,” was to equate it to about 6 weeks ago when I had Laser eye surgery and he watched my procedure on a tv screen all up close and personal. Two weeks before his own procedure. Bad idea. He could never un-see what he saw. (And I watched his procedure after having mine done because I thought it would be ‘safe’ since mine was over. WRONG. It was DISGUSTING. and I now have very intimate, very permanent knowledge of my husband’s eyeballs.)

I admittedly did try to start slow. After almost falling asleep (again) from an over-eating lunch on Friday, this past Saturday, March 1st, I simply tried to eat clean with whatever we had on hand. I managed really well actually. I was reading all I could get my hands on, in terms of understanding labels, products, food, how to shop for and cook real foods, but physically and financially, I was taking it slow. I swear! I stopped by our new, local Trader Joe’s after reading many recommendations for their products to grab some corn tortillas for our planned taco night for dinner. I admittedly also grabbed some organic sour cream (I just can’t give it up!), some whole wheat, clean breads to try out and some coconut oil. I also grabbed a Misto oil sprayer and some salad dressing containers (for homemade dressings) from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. And that was it. I was so proud of myself for taking it slow.

(And yet. Two days later I’ve already created an entire blog on the subject. Can you tell I get a little enthusiastic when excited about something??)

But like I said, it’s like seeing something you can’t un-see. I knew I needed to go to Aldi for some things for our dinner last night so I went out after church to pick up what we needed. As I was walking in the aisles, I kept looking at the shelves and people’s carts and seeing, what appeared to me, bottles and boxes and bags with that poison skull and cross bones on them. I couldn’t stop seeing everything as the processed, chemical laden toxins that were waiting to destroy us all! (okay just kidding, but I seriously couldn’t look at anything the same way again.) Everything, to me, looked like lab experiments rather than salad dressings and spice packets and cake mixes. Things I had eaten my entire life, up until the day before. Talk about a transformed mind. (Check out Romans 12:2 for God’s awesome word on the subject.)

So…this is what led to the eyeball discussion when I got home. Remember how I told you we were a dorky budgeting couple? Well, I definitely spent more than I thought and way more than my husband had been led to believe when I left to “get a few things for dinner” (but I really didn’t do so bad in the grand scheme of things – $120 for a whole lot of staples we didn’t have on hand and specific ingredients for our upcoming meals this week). I really didn’t mean for it to happen, but I really and truly couldn’t go back once I started. And from all the blogs I’ve obsessively read the last few days, it seems like most people have this same reaction, but they all advise readers to take it slow. I apparently didn’t read that part until later or I had one of my 28 year old memory lapses. Either way, I have yet to come across a real food, clean eating blog where the writer didn’t also run out and buy a bulldozer for their pantry, so maybe “take it slow” works great in theory but it impossible to practice when it comes to eye opening world of processed foods.

Needless to say, I also cleaned out my entire pantry and fridge (something else I said I wouldn’t do) as soon as I got home. Though, in my kindness and attempt to avoid my husband hating me forever, I left his favorite staples untouched.

Small tagent…All throughout my healthy journey I have never forced my husband to give up anything he wanted to eat and the same goes now. I know how many times my family tried to get me to eat all different kinds of ‘healthy’ when I was growing up and it was all pointless until I wanted it for myself. The same is true for everyone, husbands included. My husband is the most supportive and encouraging person in my healthy journey and he almost always adapts to my healthy eating in our home. He knows that he can eat whatever he wants and that whatever I cook will be healthy. Win, win. As a result he has lost weight himself and became inspired to start running. He is looking better than me and could already run faster than me on his first day out. (we ran together once while I was doing my 5k training and I swear he was galloping along like a lithe gazelle while I wheezed like a crippled elderly person with COPD after weeks of training. we never ran together again.) I’m so proud of him. (I mean, once the bitterness subsided from our failed running date.)

All in all, it was actually a really good thing to dig ruthlessly into our pantry yesterday, despite my bull in a china shop attitude. What I discovered, other than a million and 500 overly processed and chemically laden products, is that we had a LOT of stuff in there we NEVER used. Stuff I can’t even remember when I bought it. It was honestly really good to get rid of all the excess and only have things in our pantry that are real and clean, but will also be used! I always used to look at our pantry after grocery shopping and wonder, ‘what the heck did I just buy all this stuff for?’, because it always looked so overly full. But in reality it was full of junk that was never used. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to be so wasteful anymore. I divided up the items to go out into two bags (not including items that were expired or stale), one with opened, still usable items that I can see if friends or family could use (with proper disclaimers on their contents of course!!), and the other with unopened items that can be donated to a food pantry. I don’t love the idea of giving food away that I don’t feel comfortable consuming myself anymore, but I also don’t like the idea of throwing away food that would be served at a pantry or soup kitchen anyway, whether I donate it or not. I fully realize that buying and eating real, clean, organic foods is not something everyone can afford or wishes to do, so I would like to at least try to donate and give away foods that people would likely buy at the store anyways.

After I finished cleaning out the pantry, I had two giant, stuffed Aldi bags ready to be given away, in addition to a small amount of fresh items in our fridge.

The fruits of my labor.

The rest of my night consisted of making home made dressings and marinades for our dinner, making said dinner while watching a Disney movie marathon on TV, and then researching clean eating detox symptoms. (I will be happy to share more on that later as well as how cooking my first real foods dinner went. Spoiler alert. Somebody cries. I’ll let you think on that till next time).

❤
Molly

why Hello Friends!