Saturday, June 11, 2011

Every Journey Starts Somewhere Part 2

When we last left off, we had just been enlightened to the fact that maybe we couldn't just eat however we wanted and expect things to go well.

So we began changing our diet.

We cut out soda.

We cut out candy and almost all desserts.

We began checking labels.

Anything with trans fat or partially hydrogenated oil was out.

High fructose corn syrup was out.

We bought all whole-wheat everything.

Pasta.

Bread.

Tortillas.

Everything.

We began eating salads.

We bought some fruit.

We bought veggies.

Most of the stuff went bad before we ate it, but we were trying.

We tried juices that gave a serving of fruits and veggies in them.

Tomato sauce counted as a veggie most nights of the week.

We switched to low-fat.

Skim milk.

Low-fat/fat-free yogurt.

Cheese made with skim milk.

We ate more fiber.

The highest-fiber cereal we could find (that still had sugar in it...couldn't bring ourselves to eat the pellet kind with no taste).

High-fiber tortillas.

High-fiber snack bars.

We switched to ground turkey.

We didn't eat a lot of meat, but what we did eat was super lean.

We used canola oil and olive oil for all cooking.

The only things we didn't do were follow the low/no sugar craze (because we heard some scary things about the sugar substitutes) and ditch butter (couldn't bring ourselves to do margarine and butter just tasted better for baking, but we hardly used it in anything else).

Aside from those two things, we tried to be right in line with all the recommendations.

We bought products with the best ingredient lists we could find.

We waited to see our health improve and our weight drop.

It didn't.

We continued to see an ever-so-slight decline in how we felt and an ever-so-slight increase in what the scale read.

No big deal, right?

Maybe our metabolism was slowing down.

Maybe we're just not working out enough.

Maybe we're just coming in contact with more sick people.

If they sell over-the-counter medicine for the problems we're having, they have to be pretty common, right?

We were discouraged, but we figured we were just "normal" and couldn't do much about it.

Still, it bothered me. How could we be eating better than what was in most of the shopping carts we saw at Wal-Mart but still not be experiencing good health and effortless weight control?

My desire to know what was up led me to a whole new concept of eating.

I began looking at food for its nutrient value rather than for its convenience.

This became both exciting and challenging.

I’ve had to read, research and learn more than I imagined I would going into this. But the more I learn, the more I want to learn.

And I hope to share what I learn with you.

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