Dangerous Grains

    I've learned a lot about grains lately that I just wanted to share. I've already told you that I have a gluten allergy. About 10% of the population has celiac disease, where the protein found in wheat, rye, and barley damage the intestinal tract. But it is possible that up to 50% of the population could have a sensitivity to it. So many people are sick, and gluten intolerance can cause so many different side affects that people wouldn't recognize, and some might be mild enough that you don't notice it. 

     Think about how many grains you eat (or foods containing grains): breads, pasta, cereals, crackers, cake, cookies, soups, etc. Most of our carb intake comes from grains. People think by eating a whole grain sandwich, they are eating healthy. And by the way, if you're debating eating a whole wheat sandwich or a candy bar for lunch, two slices of whole wheat bread have a higher glucose index than the candy bar! Yes, you read that right, now let it sink in. Whatever nutrients you are getting from whole grains, you can get in equal or greater amounts in other food. Most grains are GMOs, and your body does not even recognize them as food anymore. The same is true with soy and corn. Corporations are all about the dollar, and to increase their profits, they create food SUBSTITUTES to increase shelf life, that are cheap to produce, and very addictive.

    My son, Chase, and I have hypoglycemia. Basically, that means that our blood sugar is pretty low, and we have to eat to keep it up or we feel faint, sick, etc. One of the things my Aunt taught me was that eating sugar (or carbs, which turn into sugar) for low blood sugar was a terrible thing to do. When you eat sugar, your blood sugar level spikes, causing your body to release insulin (which is very toxic to your body) to bring it down, and once it drops back down, you are having a "low" again. So you blood sugar keeps jumping up and down. The best thing to do is eat a small amount of natural sugar, such as a piece of apple, and protein, like a small piece of meat or nuts. That will keep your levels steady, which is what you want. And I have tested this and can tell you, it works!
    So, you want to know why grains are really so bad for your body? I've tried to simplify this explanation for you. I know it's kind of long, but it is beneficial for everyone! We all know that type 2 diabetes has become an epidemic. And it's pretty much because of the grains that we eat. Let me walk you through what happens.
    Carbs that you eat are eventually converted to a type of sugar called glucose. Glucose is a fuel, and your body stores it in your muscle cells to burn during a rigorous workout. The problem is, when you are eating too much of it, and not working out, those cells become full, and the glucose can't get into the cells anymore. Glucose is toxic in excess, and so your body dumps insulin into your bloodstream to get rid of the glucose. Insulin is even more toxic to your body. And since it has nowhere to go, it stores the sugar as fat. Your glucose levels stay higher longer because it has nowhere to go, and it's like sludge, wreaking havoc on your body, clogging arteries, causing systemic inflammation, among other things.
    Because of all the excess glucose and insulin, and it not being able to get into your muscle cells, the cells start to become resistant, and you keep storing more as fat. Insulin inhibits your fat burning enzymes, making it harder to burn stored fat. You continue to get fatter until even the fat cells start to become resistant. Your pancreas realizes that the insulin isn't working, so it continuously dumps more insulin, thinking more is better. More insulin causes plaque buildup and increases cancerous cells. (Which is why heart disease in so rampant in diabetics, and cancer is so common.)
     The muscle cells start preventing amino acids from entering too, which builds and maintains your muscles. Your body gets confused, thinking there's not enough stored sugar in your cells, so it starts burning up your muscles to turn it into yet more sugar. So you continue to gain fat and loose muscle. You have no energy, you crave carbs, and don't want to exercise. Eventually, the pancreas becomes too exhausted, and you develop type 2 diabetes, so you have to start injecting very high levels of insulin because your cells are so resistant. And the cycle repeats itself.
     So along with avoiding grains, (unless you are a high-endurance athlete about to go work out) it is really important to exercise too. And believe me, I am preaching to myself here. One of the things about this diet I'm hoping for is increased energy so I actually feel like and look forward to exercise. Exercise has a major impact of improving insulin sensitivity. Now, while genetics do play a part in developing diabetes, what we do to our bodies plays the biggest role. We need to educate ourselves about what we put into our bodies, because, like I said, think about what percentage of the food industry is grains. Do you think they care about our health? Are they going to tell you the truth?

So What Can You Eat?

      Let me start off this post with a little story, so that you can get to know me a little better. This week, I'm helping out at my son's school with testing week. The teacher I'm helping, and I won't say names, but she is the sweetest thing! Anyways, during snack, she comes up to me and says she is excited about my blog, and asks a couple questions about it, to which I excitedly go on and on and on about. I notice she's not eating a snack. Then, this morning, her dear friend told me that she had a pop tart, but was too embarrassed to eat it in front of me.
     If she had only seen me the night before. And let me just say, I do not recommend making the switch to healthy right after Easter or Halloween. For the past two weeks, we've been shoveling Easter candy down our throats to use it up before the deadline. And then the other night, I just so happened to stumble across several boxes of instant pudding in our cabinet that I forgot about. That's right people, the pudding did not make the inventory list. Well, I mean, you can't WASTE pudding. So I fixed two boxes. And then I remembered that there's a tub of cool whip in the fridge, and well, we only have a couple days left, so I put like three heaping spoon fulls of cream on each, and my husband and I proceeded to eat an entire box of pudding, and half a tub of cool whip each. So go on, girlfriend, eat your pop tart. I promise I won't judge you. And no, I can not, in good conscience, recommend this method for getting rid of your junk food.

     So, real quick, I just wanted to let you know what we will and will not be eating. And if you are planning on doing this along with me, you can make your own choices about what you cut out. I'm going to start by cutting it all out, and then possibly in a month or two, try adding a tiny bit of dairy, for instance, back in to see if and how it affects us. But for now, we are going to be eating all organic, and absolutely no GMOs. Our diet will consist of fruits and vegetables, eggs, poultry, fish, pork and grass-fed beef. We will not be eating sugar, dairy, grains, or soy. Now do you understand just how much my husband loves me?
     When I tell people what we're going to be doing, their jaw usually drops, and they immediately picture us eating boiled cabbage and chicken for the rest of our lives. But, I assure you, there are still plenty of amazing recipes out there, and I'm going to be posting what we have for dinner, with pictures, a recipe, and of course, a review. Trust me, if I'm going to keep Cory on board with this, I'm going to have to get creative.

Cutting Costs on Organic Food

     I just wanted to make it clear that I am not an expert on this stuff. I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist. I am a stay-at-home mom who is concerned about our health, and I'm sharing our experience with you. I'm learning as I go, and sharing what I'm learning with you. I am doing research on everything, and the purpose of this blog is to help those who might be considering something similar but maybe feel overwhelmed, or don't know where to start. Maybe I'll even convince some of you who hadn't planned on making a diet lifestyle change to do so.
 
   So my big excuse for a long time was not even knowing where to start. I didn't want to waste food, so for me, I had to make a list (apparently I have a lot of trouble organizing my thoughts because nothing gets done around here if it isn't on a list). I had to have a plan. For me, that's accountability. It's a good feeling marking things off my list, and I find myself anxious to mark off the next thing.
 
    Another common excuse for people is the cost of organic food. Yes, it is expensive. But there are ways around that. I shop at Earth Fare a lot. If you sign up for their emails, they have specials all the time. This week, for instance, they have grass-fed, organic ground beef for $3.99 a pound. I could see the worried faces of the people in line behind me at the meat counter as I stocked up. Don't worry, they had plenty.

    Another way for meat is finding a local organic farmer and purchasing a whole cow. It's usually cheaper that way, the cost includes the butcher fee, and they will cut it however you like, more steaks than ground beef, etc. I'll go more into that after I've completed my research, but I plan on finding two or three people to go in with me, and purchase a quarter cow, because it is a lot of money upfront, and I don't have freezer space for the whole thing. Like I said, more on that later.

   I picked a great time to do this, because it's time to plant a garden! Now, if you know me well enough, you're thinking "Oh, bless your heart, you're going to try to grow something." I have killed everything that I put my hands on. Except my kids. Somehow they've managed to survive me this long. But as far as plants, well, we just don't understand each other. However, when Chase graduated from kindergarten, he gave me a flower plant (see, I don't even know what type of flower it is.) and let me tell you, two years and three pots later, because it keeps growing, that thing is still thriving! And I realized something. I cherish that plant. It means a lot to me, and I remember to water it, and I take darn good care of it! So you see, I can grow stuff!

     I know that I have a lot to learn about gardening. Oh, and by the way, my whole life, my parents have had a huge garden. And every summer, I would be forced into manual labor, picking beans in 150 degree weather...okay so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. But you would think that I picked up my parent's green thumb. No, no I didn't. But luckily, I have amazing parents, who are extremely patient, and my dad came over today to build me some garden beds. And he will probably be walking me through the whole thing. But I'll be helping them in their garden this summer again, and hopefully instead of the mindless bean picking and snapping, they can show me how to actually plant, and all that. And for my help, they will reward me with all the fresh and canned organic veggies that I want! So find a local gardener, and offer to help them for a few vegetables if you're not up for planting a garden yourself. Or you could do a small potted garden on your deck, but just be aware that planters need watering constantly.
 

No More Excuses!

    I've wanted to get rid of all of the junk in our diets for a long time now, but my number one excuse was, "But what about all the food in our pantry? I don't want to waste it!" I would tell myself that once we eat it all up, I'd start buying better food. But there was a flaw in my plan. I kept buying more junk because it was convenient. And it's true, packaged food is convenient. It's so much easier to throw a box into the oven or microwave, and BAM, dinner's done! But we are compromising our health!
  I had to come up with a real plan and a real deadline. I talked to Cory, my husband. By the way, I love my hubby so much! I think he thinks I'm crazy, I'm expecting too many results from all of this, and he's really grumpy about having to give up his combos, cliff bars and M&Ms. But he's going along with me, supportive as ever. Anyways, he suggested having a start date, so we picked May 1st, 2014. That gave us about 5 weeks to figure out how I was going to pull this off and how to get rid of all our crap.
    Some of you might literally be able to just throw everything out and start fresh, but I was raised and taught that we didn't waste food, and that was too hard for me. So I went in my kitchen and I took inventory of everything that I had. I made a list of stuff in the pantry, freezer, and fridge. Then I took my list and came up with meal plans to use the stuff up. Some of it was eating our favorite things one or two last times, some of it was, "Here's dinner. I call it 'slop' ". And I got very creative. Every one was such a good sport. As I used items, I would mark them off the list. When it was time to figure our dinner, I'd pull out my list, and figure out items that went reasonably well together. And on the plus side, we didn't buy groceries for over a month, so we were able to save a little there.

Here is a picture of my pantry. It was actually about a week or so after I got started, but you get the idea.

And here it is again just 4 days away from our start date. I tried to use everything, but there are several items that I will just be giving away. I mean, it's hard to come up with a meal using pancake syrup and sweet pickle cubes.

I know my fridge picture is so dark, but I just want you all to be aware that it is sparkly. Like, I spent 3 hours scrubbing every nook and cranny, and now it shines with the brilliance of 100 suns. I decided to keep some of the condiments. We wont be using them on our diet, but I couldn't bring myself to trash them. I mean, we might have company, and maybe they would want some ketchup and BBQ sauce, you know?

Why the New Diet?

    Hello! My name is Anna. I'm married with 2 kids. I have bad skin, my husband is over weight, my son can't concentrate in school, we're all lazy, and sick all the time. There, now that that awkwardness is over with, we feel like we've known each other for years. Seriously though, that pretty much sounds like an average family now-a-days. And that's a only a few of our problems. Meet our family:

We're pretty cute, even with all our issues =)

   About a year ago, I went to see my aunt, who is very health-conscious. I've had headaches all my life. I would have 3-4 headaches a week, and sometimes a migraine every week too, vomiting and all. I just figured it was how I was, and something I'd have to live with. I also had stomach issues, and sometimes wondered if I had IBS. My aunt suggested I try going gluten-free, so I did. The first month, I cheated a couple times, but then I started to notice I'd feel pretty crummy when I did. Then after several weeks, I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had a headache or stomach trouble. To think it had been a food allergy to gluten all these years, and I never even suspected. Why? I ate gluten every day, so it's not like it came and went, and I could see a pattern.
   It got me thinking. What else are we eating that makes us feel bad? I used to think as long as I ate a variety of foods, I was eating pretty healthy. How many of you have looked at your ingredients lists? How many things on there can you even pronounce? My parents always say that people just didn't get sick back in the day. Back when people grew their own vegetables, meat, dairy, had chickens for eggs, and didn't spray everything with chemicals and hormones. I honestly believe the reason cancer and other diseases are so rampant is because we are poisoning our bodies with chemicals and crap, and we don't eat enough nutritious foods to keep our bodies healthy and our immune systems fully functional.
   I also believe people think they are eating properly because they believe the lies that these food companies are telling them, and don't bother to do any research. People, your sugar-loaded granola bar isn't healthy, I'm sorry. Did you know that when you eat sugar, it lowers your immune system by up to 75% for up to 6 hours? And if you don't think you eat much sugar, look at your ingredient labels. Ketchup, salad dressing, sauces, so many things you wouldn't believe have added sugar (among other things).
   So now that I've gone on a rant, the purpose of this blog is to share our family's journey to clean eating, show you what changes we experience, and to give you tips, recipes, information, and encouragement. If my family, one who loves to eat, is lazy and unmotivated, and basically has no self-control when it comes to dessert, can do it, so can you!