We Cleaned Our Food.

My little family has been eating clean for 2 weeks now!  Most everyone I talk to (except my co-workers) think that eating clean is a weight-loss diet, so I wanted to use my blog to explain that our choice to eat clean is not a gimmicky weight-loss "diet" (even though I have lost 5lbs in two weeks and have never felt better), it's a permanent lifestyle change.  I have become completely obsessed with our new food choices, so if you aren't into this sorta thing, you might just want to quit reading. 

I don't know if it's living in Europe, or my tendency to hyper-focus on things, but ever since we moved here, I started to pay super close attention to the food Eric and I were purchasing, cooking, eating, and feeding our kiddo.  One day I stood in the middle of my kitchen and realized that every single thing we ate came from a package.  Then, I took all of our staples out, put them on the counter, and read their ingredients.  I couldn't pronounce about 98% of them.  I knew I didn't like what I was reading and was sick of opening so many pre-made things, but I also knew that I needed to do some research, because I wasn't really sure why the food we had always eaten was starting to bother me.

To start, I researched organic food, healthier options to what we already eat, and did a lot of nutritional information comparisons.  Afterwards, it was obvious that we had to get rid of everything in our kitchen!  {This is when my husband stepped in and said that this would be a slow process, not impulsive, and throwing away perfectly eatable food, that we have eaten our entire lives would not be wasted!  He said that we would eat what we already have and then replace them with healthier options after we had run out and needed to go grocery shopping again.  ....He totally rained on my parade.}  

Clean eating is basically avoiding all processed and refined foods, and eating as much whole ingredients as possible.  Trust me, it's not as terrible as it sounds, and it's simple.  For a really great website for a beginner go ----> here.  Or if you're interested but don't know where to start ----> this might help.  

So after a week of researching, talking to one of the doctors I work with, and making a gigantic grocery list these are the changes we have made:

• NO non-stick cooking spray! --Instead, I have ordered a 'Kitchen Spritzer' through Pampered Chef.  This will be going under our Christmas tree, but it's going to be hard for me to not use it until then.
• Extra virgin coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil -Rather than any type of vegetable oil. 
• Whole grain noodles, flour, and breads. -Rather than whole wheat or white.
• Quinoa!  -Instead of white or brown rice. Yummy!
• NO farm raised fish of any kind!  -Only wild caught.
• Avoid all ingredients that I can not pronounce as much as possible.
• Avoid labels as much as possible. -A good example is: if you can buy vegetables from the produce market, do that, instead of buying the canned version.
• Only grass-fed beef.
• Organic -Most of the time.  I've learned that when buying food according to the ingredients, some stuff is identical to non-organic (i.e chicken broth).  Since organic food is considerably more expensive than non-organic, comparing the ingredients is very important!  
• Gluten free.
• Made from scratch rather than pre-made, in a can/package, or frozen. -The two major changes here that we have made are: 1.) making salsa from scratch rather than from a jar, and 2.) making pizza from scratch rather than a frozen one in a box.
• No more caffeine!  -I haven't been able to cut caffeine out completely yet.  But I have cut down to less than half of what I was consuming a few weeks ago and have pushed through some gnarly headaches without giving in!  This is a HUGE BIG deal for me!  Each month I plan to reduce this even more until I've cut out caffeine all together.
• Raw almond butter instead of peanut butter. -This has been a very happy surprise for me!  Turns out that I absolutely love almond butter!  

I realize that there is a lot that goes into growing/raising/packaging our food, I'm not trying to knock all of the household brands we all know and love, I just want to be healthy, and I have a lot to learn still.  But whether it's all in my head or not, I have seriously never felt better!  My tummy is better, my hands don't shake like they used to, I've lost a little weight, I'm not as hungry throughout the day, and I'm sleeping better at night.  

I want to be healthy, and I'm really just trying to make better choices for my family.  It makes perfect sense to me to cut out chemicals and preservatives, when there are some amazing and healthier alternatives that don't have chemicals or preservatives.  My body has been through hell with the number of surgeries and miscarriages I've had, and I'm not getting any younger, I don't want to make things worse for my health by forcing my body to process food into usable energy, when the food we were eating wasn't really usable anyway.  Eating clean just makes sense to me.