Time to prepare and deal with real foods is the other major objection I hear as to why changes are not made in the diet.

I will not pretend with you; it does take more time to make your food from scratch.  And if you are already overwhelmed with too much to do it seems this is impossible, especially if it is not something you are used to or something you don’t really enjoy.

7 Tips to Help with the Transition

I have a few tips that may help you move in the direction of making more of your own foods, healthy and nourishing foods.

1. Work to understand how critically important it is to nourish your body and that of your family with good real food.  The more we understand how important it is the easier it is to find the motivation we need to change.
2. The crockpot and the freezer are your friends.  Use your kitchen servants.  In this day and age our servants have become electrical and mechanical rather than people.  These servants work best if you plan ahead in how to use them.
3. Plan your meals a week or more at a time.  That leaves you time to figure out cooking dried beans ahead for a few meals rather than eating out of the can.  Or making muffins for breakfast and  popping some in the freezer so you have 2 breakfasts out of one baking.
4. Use the 80/20 principle.  I firmly believe this is a really sanity saver in any situation unless you have a family member who is highly intolerant to a certain food, like gluten or dairy.  Eat as healthy as you can manage at home and then relax when you go to friends or out to eat.
5. Find simple recipes to use with less ingredients.   These recipes are easier to learn and take less time.  You are not trying to be Julia Childs or Martha Stewart.  You are just trying to make your own food.
6. Take baby steps.  Find one area to conquer like breakfasts and getting off boxed cereal.  Cut the cereal to 2 days/week and find alternatives for the other days that are much healthier.  When that is comfortable work on dinners and so on.  It can be done but one step at a time.
7. Find a friend who wants to make changes too and do some cooking together or trade some cooking.  Maybe your friend is good at making bread and you are better at main dishes.  Perhaps you could trade once a week with each of you cooking more of what you are good at.  Or get together once a month and do some things together.

Those are some of my ideas.  If you have something that has worked to help you make more real foods please share with all of us in the comments below.

Jennifer blogs at the Entwife’s Journal, an online blog about nutrition and healthy living.  She is a homeschooling mother of 4, retired RN, and an entrepreneur assisting her husband in various endeavors.  She and her daughter also make and sell healthy skin care products at www.visionherbs.com.

LaToya

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Isn’t Real Food Really Expensive?

A common objection heard when the subject of improving one’s diet is suggested is that real food is too expensive.   Real foods, especially if you buy and eat organic will cost more than buying a diet higher in processed carbohydrates although with some qualifiers.  If you are starting from the place of eating many processed and boxed foods this is not cheap in our society either.  Boxed cereals can run easily $4.00/box and they don’t last all that long.  But you can’t really compare the two ways of eating.

One is real food and nourishes the body;  the other is not real food and harms the body.  Many of these unhealthy processed foods contain corn byproducts like corn syrup or xantham gum or some other form of corn.  Corn, soy, and wheat are major crops that are subsidized to reduce their costs and thus they are more available to consumers at a reduced cost. If you look into it corn, soy and wheat are the 3 major crops which cause intolerances and problems in many individuals ((in addition to dairy products).  Plus corn and soy are both 90 % genetically modified in this country and that is a whole other ball of wax to unravel.  For now suffice it to say that GMO foods are not healthy and not the way you want to go.

These heavily processed foods do not nourish or feed our bodies or our children’s bodies.  If you are looking at food costs also look at health care costs over all, including vitamins, co-pays to doctors or if you don’t have insurance, doctor’s visits in general, as well as food.  Eating real foods is much healthier and will hopefully in time cut down doctor’s visits and reduce the need for vitamins because it is coming from our food.  In fact I would argue that you can’t afford not to eat real foods and eat healthier because it is so essential for a healthy flourishing body.

Making a Real Food Diet More Affordable:

1. Buy directly from the producer.  This means find the farmers in your community or at a local farmer’s market and buy directly from them.  It might take a bit more time but you will be able to hold the farmer accountable for what he produces and you will find you get the products fresh and get the benefit of his knowledge as well.  There is the added blessing of building some relationship and community with those who produce your food.
2. Eat seasonally.  This goes along with #1 because you are buying what your farmer has available at certain times.  So spring brings asparagus, lettuce, spinach,peas, rhubarb, and strawberries.  Summer brings squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, berries, peaches, and more.  Fall brings squash, pumpkins, beets, carrots, apples, pears, and the abundance of the end of the season which means even better prices for canning or freezing for the winter.
3. Make as much as you can manage from scratch yourself.  (I will cover the time factor for this in my 3rd post.)  It is always cheaper to make something like cookies or a casserole yourself rather than purchasing it at the store ready made.  Plus you will know exactly what is in it because you are the one who put it together.   Even if you don’t consider yourself much of a cook there are great recipe blogs out there with lots of time and cost saving strategies.
4. Try some meatless meals to help cut down on meat costs, which are often some of the most expensive parts of the food bill.  Rice and beans are a healthy meal that is very cost saving.
5. Cut back on eating out. Save eating out for a special occasion.   Plan ahead to avoid getting caught without food for your family.    If you are going to work start bringing a bag lunch which is healthier as well as cheaper unless you have an important meeting or event that you need to be part of.

In the 3rd and last post I will cover the objection of time and how it relates to healthy real foods.

Jennifer blogs at the Entwife’s Journal, an online blog about nutrition and healthy living.  She is a homeschooling mother of 4, retired RN, and an entrepreneur assisting her husband in various endeavors.  She and her daughter also make and sell healthy skin care products at www.visionherbs.com.

LaToya

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I’m so excited to introduce you all to Jennifer. She has been gracious enough to help me out while I’m away and will be sharing some helpful tips and encouragement about making the switch to a whole food/real food diet.

There is much talk these days about eating a whole foods or a real foods diet.  Most of us understand that to mean foods that are not processed or packaged.  I would expand that a bit to be foods that are eaten in a form that is close to the way God created them.  So of course real foods includes vegetables and fruits that are eaten whole and raw or slightly cooked.  It also includes meats, preferably that are raised in a way that God designed them to be.  This would include beef and lamb that is grass fed and chicken and pork that is raised in a pasture where they can pursue the treats they love because it is part of their nature.  It also can include grains that are processed just enough to be digestible by soaking, grinding, and cooking to reduce the phytates and indigestible parts of the grains.

What are “real foods”?

Real foods does not include processed and precooked items that are picked up from the store and are ready to eat after a quick heat up in the microwave.  As convenient as this may be there is little if any nutrition in most of these foods.  In fact in these days of genetically modified foods this type of food will probably actually harm you.

What if I don’t like real food?

Okay, you say, that sounds good but what if I don’t like these kinds of foods?    And is this the only thing I can eat?  Do I have to change my diet completely?

My answer to that is to encourage you to take baby steps to make changes.  Figure out your goal and begin to move toward it slowly.  With anything if you make changes too fast the changes will not last because either you will give up with feelings of being overwhelmed or you will hate the changes too much and won’t stick it with it.   So how do we make sustainable changes towards a whole foods diet?  Start with a particular category like vegetables.  Maybe you don’t like vegetables at all.   (Sorry folks peas, corn, and potatoes don’t really count as vegetables; they are grown as vegetables but work as starches in your body.  Vegetables are spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, rutabagas  beets, carrots, squash, etc.)  Start by finding a local farmer or farmers market to buy the vegetables that are in season as they taste the best and are the most affordable.  Look at the internet for some interesting ways to cook them or eat them raw.  (I find vegetarians blogs are most helpful for great recipes to use vegetables.)  And make it a goal to try a new vegetable each month that you have not ever had before or a new recipe with an old familiar vegetable.

I have found the 80/20 rule to be helpful in my goals for healthy eating.  Try to work towards 80 % of your diet being really healthy and then your body can probably handle the other 20 % that is not.  (This rule works well if you are relatively healthy and if not then it may need to be a higher percentage.)

If you think you don’t have time to cook this way or that you can’t afford it stay tuned for follow-up posts to come.

Jennifer blogs at the Entwife’s Journal, an online blog about nutrition and healthy living.  She is a homeschooling mother of 4, retired RN, and an entrepreneur assisting her husband in various endeavors.  She and her daughter also make and sell healthy skin care products at www.visionherbs.com.

LaToya

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