Join me

I promise I will do a blog about the fun times our family had at Amanda & Scott's wedding tomorrow. But for this post I want to talk about one of my favorite things, food.

I love me some Whataburger, donuts, french fries, ice cream, cookies, etc. I try to eat healthy, but sometimes a HUGE bowl of tortilla chips and salsa or queso just screams my name. As I have gotten older, (yeah, I am an old kid now), I have started to have revelations about food. Let me share a few with you

• Shout out to my mom for teaching me that two pop-tarts is not a healthy breakfast. 
• Learning at a college volleyball game that donuts are basically just fat, I mean like a test tube full of stuff that just clogs every artery. 
• When you eat healthy stuff, you are fuller longer. 
• Things should not eat ingredients in processed food that you cannot pronounce. 
• Your body does not process greasy, crappy, processed foods well. See heartburn, IBS, gas, bloat, etc. 
• Things that you think are healthy (ie chicken, milk, etc) could be processed in plants where they fill the animal on hormones and other things. This makes what you are eating have poor nutritional content. Hence why reading labels is SO important. 
• You can easily make healthy switches in food and people won't even know. Right J and Randall? Anytime I cook for either of them I replace the meat with turkey or chicken, any bread/pasta with whole wheat/grain, etc. I always tell mom, but never the boys and they do not know the difference. 
• Ask J, I made 4 ingredient muffins last week. He tried one and ate more than me. 

By no means am I saying I will deny myself of every "treat", Whataburger stop, etc. for the rest of my life. I think everything should be in moderation. But I do believe it it important to be educated about food. As the prime example, me in elementary school thinking that two pop-tarts for breakfast was acceptable (they are good though, especially the smores one).

This issue is one I feel strongly about for two big reasons. A. because I work in a gym. I see people walk in everyday and talk about how terrible they ate the night before, so they think they need to spend an hour on the treadmill, to work it off. It really doesn't work like that. You will probably see more success in losing weight/becoming a healthier person in the kitchen than in the gym. By no means am I saying don't workout. But I am saying you have to make a commitment in the kitchen AND the gym. Not one or the other.

My reason B is because at times I have been food illiterate. It is not easy to navigate all the traps of the food industry. You think you are buying "clean, healthy" milk and you find out it is produced in a warehouse, where the cows never see outside, are pumped up on hormones so they can just continually produce milk.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to get PETA/vegan crazy on you. I think it is important for people to know facts and not be deceived by what they are eating.

So if you have been thinking about making a change, I encourage you to visit this website: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/start-here/

The goal of this is to help people stop their addiction to processed foods and get back in the kitchen. I love this website because they acknowledge this can be expensive, so they talk about ways to help you stretch your dollar. Like anything it isn't easy to do this. But I can promise you, your body will thank you. Once you start to cut out all this crud, your body will not crave it anymore. Plus, if you do go back and eat it, you will physically feel the effects.

I hope y'all try this out. Whether it is one meal a day, or eating out one less day a week, your food choices can change your life.

love love love y'all,
K