A New Way of Eating in the Brown Household...

I am trying to change the way the Browns eat!  This is no easy task I assure you.  Why is that?  Well to begin with, as Danny so rightly put it, I don't really want to eat a different way.  That is the first problem, yes!  I was angry at first when he said this to me, but in essence he is right.  I have been raised my whole life on eating few fruits, even fewer vegetables, and having many sweets right at my fingertips.  I don't blame my parents for this.  While some of it was their doing (my mother doesn't like many veggies herself and therefore didn't try to force us to eat them) it was my choice to continue eating that way when I got older.  When Danny and I got married, we ate a lot of things out of a box, processed, and full of ingredients I can't even pronounce.  We ate a lot of macaroni and cheese, hamburger helper, and sugary cereals for breakfast.  Once we were both making money, we started eating out, A LOT!

So, for most of my life, this is how I would eat.  It is much easier to stick with what you know, rather than change to something you don't know.  Also, when you eat a lot of junk, you begin to crave that junk.  You get a "sweet tooth" or you just "need" a wopper today.  I can agree with Danny in that much of me enjoys this way of eating because it is comfortable and I've learned to like that food.  I would get tired of it sometimes, and get on a healthy eating kick, but then quickly fall off the wagon.  I didn't put in the effort to learn new ways of cooking, find healthier versions of things, or practice cooking from scratch.  I would always fall back on what I knew.

Now, it's no longer about me.  Now there is this new person in our lives, who will be watching what we do, and learning to copy us.  It is my dream to raise a child who not only eats healthy, but is willing to try many new things, basically the opposite of me.  I can't do that by constantly putting crap in her body or feeding her one thing but eating something else myself.  I have to set an example for Emma and any other children we may have now, so that when she grows up and has her own family, she already knows how to have a healthy diet.

So, what am I changing you ask?  First of all, I'm starting with us.  I just finished reading the book Real Food For Mother and Baby.  Her basic way of looking at food is, if our great-grandparents couldn't eat it, we shouldn't either.  She is all about getting back to the real and basic foods.  I can follow some of her principles, but not all.  Here are some of what I learned from her that I'm trying to put into practice.

• We are working towards drinking real milk.  She would say that means whole, unpasturized, unhomogenized, grass fed milk, given no hormones.  I can't do all of those things, but right now we are drinking 2% (with a goal of getting to whole soon), unhomogenized milk.  I also believe from reading about the farm where we get our milk, it is grass fed as well, but I may be wrong there.  I know the cows are given no hormones.  I can tell you that this is the best milk I have ever tasted!!
• I think I have found a place where I can buy pastured eggs, meaning they have the freedom to roam all the time, not just occasionally get out of the cage.  If I can't afford to do that all the time, then I will try to buy organic, free range eggs all of the rest of the time.
• I'm giving up the "low fat" versions of food, and sticking with the full, original food, but in moderation.  Many of the good nutrients we need in foods are eliminated when they try to reduce the fat in them.  Therefore, bring on the fat!
• I'm trying to eliminate high fructose corn syrup from our diet (at least as much as I can).  I have made a conscious effort as I prepare meals and shop to either not buy some foods that contain it or to buy the organic/pure forms of foods to get away from it.  One example is to buy 100% pure maple syrup.
• I'm trying to stop cooking with or eating foods that contain all unnatural fats such as vegetable oil. I will now cook with lots of butter and olive oil, and as soon as I can find/afford it, coconut oil.
• We are going to eat far more fruits and veggies.  The author of Real Foods says that the best way to cook veggies is with one fat (olive oil or butter) salt and one or two other flavors to add a little extra.  So, tonight I cooked organic broccoli by sauteing it in butter along with salt and chopped garlic and sprinkled it with parmesan cheese.  Danny LOVED it!  And, he's not a huge cooked broccoli fan. 
• We are going to limit the amount of times a month we eat out, especially fast foods.  Our budget could really benefit from this as well as our bodies!

Now, these are the first steps I'm taking right now to make us healthier eaters.   Please don't for a second read this and think I'm saying that I'm great at any of these steps (except maybe the milk... it is the best milk ever!) because I am definitely not.  It will be a slow process, but if I can make small changes over time, in the future we will be eating much better than now.  To give myself some extra grocery money to do some of these things, I'm trying to coupon so that I can stockpile some of our "essentials" allowing me to only purchase a few items for each meal and giving me some extra spending money for the rest.  I'd love to get to where I can purchase exclusively grass fed beef, but that is expensive, so we're not there yet!  Thus far, I have loved making some new meals, and I feel like we're having such a bigger variety than before.  I'm trying not to make things too hard, or otherwise I won't stick to it.  I have a good year to work on this before I'll be feeding a third mouth consistently.  Which brings me to my next change, which is more of a change of plans than a change of routine!

A long time ago, when Danny and I were still only dating and we were discussing the possibility of children in the future, I remember telling him I would absolutely NEVER breast feed a baby!  I was not breast fed as a baby, and I didn't think that was something I needed to do.  He argued pretty hard with me that night about how much healthier it was for a baby, but I couldn't help but point out that I was a healthy child as was my brother, and neither of us ever had breast milk (unless we had some at the hospital before we started on formula, I don't know).  Never would I have imagined I would go so completely to the other side of that argument! :-)

What do I mean by "so completely to the other side"?  I LOVE nursing Emma!  For the first 2-3 weeks of her life, we had some difficulty.  She learned to latch fairly quickly, but I was still very sore and bled quite a bit!  But, once we got passed that time, we've had no issues.  I enjoy nursing her for many reasons, and she certainly loves to nurse!  You only have to get one look at her adorably chunky thighs and arms to believe me!  Still, right after she was born, I began to dream of when she'd start solids.  I did tons of research into which baby cookbook I wanted, found the perfect freezer containers for all of the homemade baby food I couldn't wait to cook for her.  And, then I read Real Food as well as a couple of good blogs, and I discovered baby-led weaning.  After doing some research into the topic, I think this is the route this family will go.  What does that mean?

• Emma will have no pureed foods, unless she is one of those children with a very high gag reflex and just absolutely needs it for a bit
• We will not start with the "recommended" cereal, as grains are harder to digest and have less nutrients in them.  I hope to push off grains until 1 year.
• I won't begin feeding her anything but breast milk until she shows signs of wanting to try food.  It will be at least 6 months, but it may be much later if she isn't ready by then.
• She will eat whatever we are having.  I don't want to start her getting used to "kid foods" at a young age, and become dependent upon them.
• I hope I can be patient enough to not worry about how much she's getting within the first year.  Breast milk will be the main source of nutrition for her for much longer, therefore, if she doesn't eat much at the beginning, then I'm going to TRY not to worry or fret.  That's a very important part of the process but the hardest for me, as I just want to know she's getting the nutrition she needs.

As Emma grows, I will keep you updated on how we do with this.  I hope, by providing her with lots of tastes and textures early on she will be less picky than I was, but I also know that some of the pickiness comes from nature not nurture.  So, we will see how that plays out later.  I know this will equal a lot of work for me, because everything I've read on the topic says that to keep BF a baby that long, and as the main supplier of nutrients means that the mama has to eat and drink a lot of healthy foods herself to keep up the milk supply.  So, my prayer is that I will be able to do so!

After a lot of thought and prayer on the topic, I feel like this overhaul is a good idea.  Besides all of the obvious health benefits, I believe it will help all three of us to be better stewards of our bodies, as we are called to be by Christ.  This isn't a "get thin" fix for me or a new fad.  I want to know that what I am feeding my baby girl as well as Danny and myself is helping our bodies, not hurting them.  We have overindustrialized food so much that we have eliminated many things we actually need and added many more that are harmful to us.  While I will still enjoy many of the products of industrialization of food, and I'm not out to condemn it, I do hope that we can get back to some of the good, "real" food we can overall be healthier people and have a better enjoyment of food!  So, for those of you who have lasted this long with this post, thanks for reading my thoughts!  I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of these issues, and if you follow any of these principles, how they have or have not worked for you!