2014 = A year of changes!

I am a lover of food. I have been for as long as I can remember. I don't just love any kind of food...I like anything fried, anything with cheese, and anything that is bound to leave me hating myself the next time I step on the scale haha. My family is from the smallest hick town in all of South Carolina (I say that with love... love and honesty haha) and good southern food is what we're about. We center around it for Holidays/births/deaths/weddings, because food is a comfort in the South. It's so much more than just "nutrients to maintain life and growth" to my family.

Through the years I would make feeble attempts to get "healthier". To me that meant eating whatever was labeled "reduced fat" for a couple of weeks until the scale was back where I wanted it. Then my husband and I decided to get pregnant. I am a planner by nature, so the second I found out I wanted to know everything about pregnancy. And it turns out, pregnancy is not centered around food like I thought. There is a ton of stuff you are not supposed to eat/drink. I was very disciplined and followed the rules my entire pregnancy. A few months and about 25 pounds later I was home with a beautiful little girl and my next research project was figuring out what to feed her. You work to conceive, carry, and birth this little miracle.. I only wanted the BEST for her. Here's where my rambling is going to start getting to a point (I promise). Turns out the more I looked for "the best" the more I realized that it's not sold in our mainstream grocery stores anymore.

The more I started understanding how to read packaging labels and really learning what is in our food, the more concerned I grew. My daughter has been eating organically since birth. First with her baby food. Then it started creeping into our lives (and refrigerator) with her milk and eggs. Then around 6 months she stopped eating baby food, and we started switching our meat and veggies to organic. We were always so diligent about making sure she had the best that for some reason we put ourselves on the back burner. A large portion of it was because of cost. I was convinced we would be doubling our grocery bill if we only shopped organically, and wasn't ready to do that on Army salary. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized it was pay now with groceries, or pay later with our health. Our child deserves to have her dad walk her down the aisle and her mom around to help with her babies. I wasn't willing to risk those things for "comfort" or out of fear of change. The more I showed my husband what I was learning the more willing he was to jump on board with me. We made the switch! And I actually saved receipts from my shopping for a comparison. The difference from my trip to walmart vs. my first trip to whole foods for our entire grocery list was a whopping 30 dollars. And I'm sure I could get that down with some bargain hunting and incorporating our local organic meat farm & co-op that I recently discovered into my shopping trips.

I was feeling awesome with how much effort we were putting into this and how easy the switch was when I started realizing that there were other things in our life in need of a makeover. Our cleaning products were next on the list. I swapped out bleach for a homemade mix with essential oils. Then I swapped out our laundry detergent. Then I swapped out our toothpaste/shampoo/deodorant for all natural products. We are currently trying out some essential oils in place of medication (topically, not orally) and my next step is evaluating my cosmetics/perfumes/scentsy stash/etc.

If I had a few hours to kill I'd write out all the harmful effects of some of the food (and other household products) we are putting into our bodies on a daily basis. I'd explain the damage being done to us and our children because of chemicals used in products and food we use everyday. I can't even fathom how this is LEGAL much less so prevalent, but it is. To put it simply, we are slowly poisoning our bodies everyday and the proof is all around you. In our bread, in our chips, in our cheese, in our tea, in our drinks, in our meat, in our veggies (IN not just ON).

I'm blogging about this because I think that the fact that we aren't experts in the subject makes us easy to relate to. We don't know everything there is to know and we aren't intimidating, so I'd love to have people make changes with us. And maybe learn from our trial and error. I'm including some links below from people much smarter than I that can explain what is in your food, why, and the what it causes.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-10504/10-things-i-wish-all-americans-knew-about-toxins.html

http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/natural-and-organic/

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/10-american-foods-banned-countries/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exBEFCiWyW0

To use as a reference if you're just beginning to make the switch:
http://food.yourway.net/the-2013-dirty-dozen-clean-fifteen-printable-cheat-sheet/

http://www.nongmoproject.org/learn-more/

http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/7-side-effects-of-drinking-diet-soda