Whole Foods (not the store)

So I miss the days when I was little. My grandma and I had so much fun running around to garage sales on Saturday mornig and when we had shopped till we dropped, we would stop at Checkers (a burger spot) and get hamburgers and delicious spicy fries. This is literally one of my favorite memories with my grandmother.

In those days I could eat whatever I wanted. As I grew older, my metabolism changed but I was still able to eat relatively whatever I wanted and just increase (or start) working out to keep my weight in check.

Well those days are long gone now. I don't even live in a state that has Checkers, which is a blessing because my metabolism recently did what I heard it would eventually do, it quit. Not really but it feels that way. I suddenly am keeping the same diet/exercise routine but gaining weight anyway...aren't your 30's supposed to be when you are thriving. Oh well.

I checked out this great doc called "Forks Over Knives" that really got me thinking about what types of foods I'm putting in my body. Forks would tell you to cut out all animal products (meat, cheese, etc.). My hubs would tell you that is not happening. But Forks did make some great points so it got me doing some more research. I know enough about health, nutrition and the internet to know that you cannot just trust one source for your information. You have to do the research.

A book I've recently come across is "Healing with Whole Foods" by Paul Pitchford. This book is full of information about eating a whole-foods, plant-based diet. The idea is less about animal cruelty (which is honestly what you get from way too many of these websites and books). Animal cruetly stinks but I want to find out the health/nutrition reasons behind a more veggie diet, not about how chickens should or shouldn't be treated.

So back to the book...I really love it. It mixes Asian traditions with modern ideas about nutrition. It is really helpful and gives some good ideas about how to get the same nutrition from plant-based, whole foods as you would from a traditional animal-based diet.

Beau and I will not be going full vegetarian any time soon (I think Beau would say never). And the idea of never eating buffalo chicken anything again makes me want to cry. But what we are going to do is be more concious about what we eat at home. Meals at home will not be centered around an animal protein anymore. We'll still cook meat at home sometimes, we'll not be those annoying friends who you don't know what to cook for when they come over for dinner cause they are strict vegans, and we'll still eat meat when we eat out if we want. We'll just limit our animal product intake at home and try to purchase and focus on eating more whole foods and plant-based nutrition at home.

My metabolism and I still are not talking but I'm hoping that she'll wave the white flag soon and we can negotiate some terms we can both live with...hopefully.