Eating REAL Food

The latest adventure our little family is embarking on is to try to only eat real food for the next 30 days. Pete came across this website on Sunday and it just made so much sense to us that we decided right then and there that we were going to try it. Here's my favorite quote from the article:

Let’s keep it simple: Eat real foods, preferably in their natural state. I think it’s pretty easy to figure out what is “food” and what isn’t. A few things to remember:

• Food grows and dies. It isn’t created.
• Food rots, wilts, and becomes generally unappetizing, typically rather quickly.
• Food doesn’t need an ingredient label (and probably isn’t in a package either).
• Food doesn’t have celebrity endorsements.
• Food doesn’t make health claims.

Let’s give some foods this simple test and see if we should eat them:

• Broccoli – Most certainly a real food
• Steak – Deliciously real food, straight off the cow
• Oreo cookies – Hold while I read the ingredients. Are you serious?
• Eggs – Bingo
• Walnuts – Check
• Spaghetti – I don’t recall seeing a spaghetti tree on my last hike
• Pop-Tarts – Just seeing if you’re paying attention
• Pasteurized/Homogenized Milk – Nope, not in its natural state
• Raw Milk – Yep, real food, naturally

I would highly recommend reading the whole article. It is so interesting, and like I said, it just really rang true to us. Basically we're going to try and only eat food in its natural state. Nothing processed and no sugar. For the first 2 weeks we're also going to cut out dairy and wheat just to make sure we don't have any allergies. I'm pretty sure we'll add those back in, but maybe not as much as before. We'll see how we feel on this one. We're also going to try and not eat peanuts for a few weeks. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to try it. I'm pretty sure I'm not allergic to peanuts because I practically live on peanut butter, but it's worth a try.

I had already made no-bakes when we made this decision, and we were running low on food so we just decided to start on Monday.

The first morning was pretty rough. I made scrambled eggs and bacon and the kids were not happy about not having cereal. I don't think Mindy ate any of it. For lunch we actually cheated because I wanted to use up the bread we have so we had PB & Js, but at least it was with whole wheat bread, natural peanut butter and simply fruit jam. After that, I went to the store and bought a ton of fruits and veggies and some fish. Look at all that good real food!

I also got sick on Sunday night, so Monday I wasn't feeling like doing too much so I just put the left-over whole roasted chicken we got from the store a few days ago, into the crpckpot with some water for a while. Later I added some carrots, onion, a sweet potato, a regular potato, some salt and pepper, and that was it. It was really good, and the perfect dinner for me after being sick sick sick all day.

Today was much better. I got up and just made a bunch of hard boiled eggs, and cut up some oranges to put on the table. Elle, Mindy and I also shared an avocado. Everybody dug right in to this breakfast and it was great! Most of the eggs got eaten, and all but one slice of orange. Everyone was happy and full when we headed out the door.

For lunch, I just salted some chicken tenders and put them in a pan with some X-virgin olive oil. When I flipped them, I added some broccoli, some apple cider vinegar and a little soy sauce. (This soy sauce was cheating a little bit because it has wheat in it. I don't think that's the case with all soy sauce, though.) It was really good, and Elle even ate all her chicken and broccoli along with 2 baby carrots.

It looks like I might have to do a bit more cooking since I usually don't cook for breakfast or lunch, but I think it will be worth it.

For dinner I made a recipe that we got from their free 30 Day Transform manual that we downloaded. It was fish, and I still was not feeling very good so I was worried about making this. I was also worried that the kids wouldn't like it because it's so different. Here's all it was:

Fish and Vegetable Curry

• 14 oz white fish fillets (I used halibut) cut into thick slices
• 14 oz coconut milk
• 2 Tbs. red curry paste
• 2 carrots, cut into thin strips
• 2 cups red cabbage, thinly sliced
• Fresh coriander (oops, I forgot to add this...)
• Place coconut milk and red curry paste into a pan on medium heat for 2 minutes, stirring until combined.
• Add fish, carrots and red cabbage. Cover and simmer for 4-5 minutes, or until fish has cooked.
• Serve with fresh coriander leaves.

Super easy. And would you believe me if I told you that the kids all ate it? Well, they did. Ethan even had seconds, and probably would have had more if there was more left. It was really good. I'm not big on fish, but I liked it. This is such an easy recipe that we could switch the meat and vegetables around however we want, and it would be good.

There were 6 no-bakes left after dinner, so I gave each kid half of one, had half myself and dumped the rest down the disposal. I think I even just ate mine because I felt bad waisting it. Luckily I used up the rest of our sugar making those cookies so all I have to do is not buy any more!

I'm not going to say this will be easy. I love baking, and have a hard time considering Sunday complete without making cookies or cake or something. But it's just not worth it. I don't like how I feel when I eat that stuff, and I'm really hoping if we cut it out I will stop craving it so much.

So, here we go. Feel free to jump on and ride the real food train with us for a while and see how you feel. I'll let you know how it makes us feel.

Right now I still feel pretty yucky because of this nasty cold that just hit me so suddenly Sunday night. I do feel better than I did yesterday, though, so I'm really hoping to be able to run tomorrow. I have been tempted to make juice, because I always drink a ton of juice when I'm sick, but I've just been drinking a lot of water which is probably doing me as much (or more) good as juice.