Healthy eating is confusing

About 10 years ago, I had a total cholesterol reading of 309. Every since I have made it my goal to try to eat healthier.  I checked out a ton of books at the library about cholesterol and heart health and learned all I could. Yep, I am one of those annoying mothers in the aisle at the grocery store with three small kids running around while I TRY to read labels. Who can blame them, it takes so long to read those labels and I always feel like the labels are trying to trick me, and WHO knows what some of those ingredients really are? A kid can behave properly for only so long!

This is part of what got me started gardening. I wanted to grow my own, much cheaper, organic, healthy and sometimes unique and fun food. I would have a whole farm if I could but my energy level and my husband say "NO!" I'm pretty sure my kids would be all for it!

For the past 10 years I have tried to follow whatever  health advice that sounded reasonable and had good studies behind them. I got rid of all the fatty oils, sodas, chips, candy, I stopped frying with the new fryer I got for a wedding present. I switched to "whole" grain (or so I thought sometimes, those tricky labels!) I'm not completely perfect but that is a lot of junk to cut out. I lost about 50 lbs. I used the idea that if it wasn't in the house I wouldn't eat it. That didn't help much when going out to eat!

All these years later, I still have a just few pounds to shed and no energy, and even though my husband has followed almost the same diet, sadly he has gained all the baby weight with no success losing it. So, where are we going wrong? I have started reading a lot of Real food or traditional food diet information and I am beginning to feel maybe I (what I have read) have been wrong about some things, and fooled by food companies and FDA guidelines. Some things I read make me down right angry. I think I have made the step in the right direction. But now I am thinking I need to more. My family is going to ATTEMPT to ditch processed foods. Boy is that going to be HARD!  We are going to try to make some more simple switches to slowly get to an more real, whole food diet.  This includes milk, eggs, butter.

When I say I feel fooled by food companies, let me give you at least one example. Pictured above. The top spoon is holding the typical  honey you get at the grocery store. I always bought which ever one was cheap, which is all you can do sometimes. The lower spoon has RAW pure honey. Looks like butter, doesn't it? Whenever you hear about honey's healing power, it isn't from the top one. All the good stuff is processed out of it just like many other things we buy regularly.  

Another thing that makes me angry is food isn't food anymore, it is all engineered to be something RESEMBLING what they think you want. And in the process becomes even more unhealthy. I want HEALTHY, real healthy! Not manufactured to look like it might be healthy.

If you are interested in finding good recipes for eating real whole food, or more information about 'eating real', these have had a lot of good stuff for me. As fellow gardeners I am sure you already get plenty of Real Food! But if you're like me, check 'em out!

100 Days of Real Food

Weed 'em and Reap

Keeper of the Home-Naturally Inspired Living for Homemakers

These are some of the substitutions we will be slowly making in our home:

Simple Real Food Substitution Chart from Keeper of the Home.

I don't know how any of this will go but it is worth a try. I will share our journey with you and let you know how it works out for us. Much of it seems to go totally against the grain of everything we have ever been taught, but upon reading, much of what they are asserting seems to make sense to me. So this week, we are throwing out the Earth Balance!

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note: I've noticed this appears to be a controversial subject for some. Any nasty comments will be removed. Let's all play nice please.