The Whys and Hows of Eating “Real Food”

I am not a fan of fads.

So this change that we are making, I do not want to just be a fad. I want it to last. I want it to influence us. I want it to change our lives for the better.

So, why?

First Reasons: Being in youth ministry, it is easy to fall into the diet of a teenager. When you think about what many teenagers eat and drink, you probably think of pizza, snacks (chips, cookies), and pop. Well, you couldn’t be more right! What they eat, we typically eat too.

Second reason: After getting to know others who have drastically changed their diet to not only feel better, but to prevent diseases such as cancer, I realized that I should not need a drastic diagnosis to make me change our diet. Okay, it seems like it’s a fad right now to eat organic, to eat whole foods, and to get rid of the processed, but I don’t want it to be “too late.”

Third reason: Now having a child, I am realizing that what we eat, she is learning that “this” is what makes up a food diet. That what we eat, Mazy will eat. That really made me think!

Fourth reason: I do have a heart condition and low-salt is always recommended. Problem is, I LOVE salt. Salt to flavor, not salt to preserve. Many processed foods are LOADED with salt, that you can’t even taste. So why waste my salt intake on something I can’t even taste? I want to be heart-healthier with my diet, so just another reason to make the change.

When I looked through our cupboards, I knew I had to do some purging. For instance, when I was pregnant, I had a craving for Walmart’s Great Value Thick and Creamy Mac and Cheese. Oh how I still love that stuff, but it is nothing but processed. Not that it made me feel bad, but I knew it wasn’t good for me. So in the food donation bag it went.

In choosing to eat healthier, it hasn’t been something that has been easy. Or cheap. Or time-saving. In fact, quite the opposite! But it has been completely worth it! So here are a few steps we have taken to eat healthier and make it a life-changing choice and goal, instead of just a fad:

1. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store. I am sure you have heard this many times, but it’s true!

2. Don’t always focus on the bill – think about how far the food goes. Many processed items are boxed and it ONE meal. If you buy veggies, you can typically get multiple meals out of them! Also, think about what you are preventing. You may have to spend $20 more, but if that $20 is buying foods that will help fight sicknesses and diseases, I think it is worth it!

3. Shop at Aldi. You know that I am a huge fan of Aldi. There are many reasons why I shop there. One of them being, it is much cheaper to eat healthy, if you can shop at Aldi! Nuts, organic pastas, fruits, vegetables, dairy, etc. are just CHEAP at Aldi. You just can’t go wrong!

4. Buy a cookbook. When doing research on how to eat healthier, and eating more foods from scratch, I found 2 cookbooks to be very helpful: Power Foods and 100 Days Of Real Food. Power Foods teaches you how to cook these strange vegetables you probably never heard of, while creating meals out of them (which some are a little extreme for me). Then 100 Days of Real Food is a PRACTICAL guide on how to change your diet, but also has recipes that I will use. I have already cooked out of this book numerous times! It also teaches you how to make things from scratch, to bypass all of the preservatives that store-bought foods have.

5. Gotta love Pinterest! I have been able to pin a lot of different whole foods recipes.

6. It is worth the time. Yes, it is very time-consuming to eat healthy because most everything is made from scratch. But I have found that all of the food prep is worth it because again, the food goes far. For example, if you cut up veggies to roast, for 2 people, those veggies last forever! I recently made homemade tomato sauce to freeze. Sounds complicated, but it was not at all! All I did was puree the tomatoes, add the seasonings, cook for 1 hour (stirring every once in a while), and voila! And I will get multiple meals out of it!

7. Be patient. Not going to lie, there have been some “healthy” recipes I have made that did NOT taste good! Then there have been others that have been insanely good! So it’s all about trial and error. You will learn what your family likes and what they don’t.

8. We are NOT extreme! I still make cookies. I still make bars. We still eat desserts. We have not completely cut out anything labeled as “unhealthy”. We are just enjoying eating healthIER. Call it splurging or call it realistic. We still like our ice cream and cookies! But, I have found a good brownie recipe that is healthy…

9. Believe it or not, it’s fun! When I am in the kitchen making something from scratch, it gives me confidence as a baker and cooker. That I can make these what seem like crazy recipes. Plus, I have had this weird love for homesteading, so this just feeds into it all the more!

10. Once you start, you realize you just can’t stop. When I am making something, I often think “how can I make this healthier?” Like spaghetti – I now make my own sauce, buy cheap organic pasta and shredded parmesan from Aldi. Boom. Healthier spaghetti. It really is about what you keep in your cupboards. What you keep in there, you will eat. All about choices!

Trust me, this whole thing is a work in progress! If you were to come to our house, you would still see cereal. Frozen pizzas (though I am learning how to even make those from scratch). Canned foods (like beans). We are not going crazy, don’t worry. We are just trying to make better choices.

And, even though I haven’t necessarily lost poundage, my clothes do fit differently! I think between exercising and eating healthier, I just feel better, and my clothes fit better too! Always a good feeling.

How about you? Do you have a go-to “real food” recipe that you would like to share? What are your thoughts about eating healthier? Scary? Too time-consuming? Worth it?

So here’s to not making it a fad, but a life-changing goal! Stay tuned because I plan on writing more posts about how we are making this whole “eating healthier idea” possible!