Food Philosophy??

Today is a great day! Not only because I got 9 hours of perfect, undisturbed, deep sleep; or the fact that we are only one day away from Friday, but because today's blog is about food and we all know I LOVE food!! :)

Day 9: What's your food philosophy?

This sounds like such a deep question regarding food, but I take my food seriously so I was looking forward to answering it!

Although Americans have more food to eat than almost any other people in the world, there are even more diets to keep them from eating it.

Now I'm not saying that we should go out and overeat every meal, or indulge in horrible foods every day, but I am saying that God gave us food to enjoy and gave us wisdom to enjoy it correctly and with a balance. I hear of so many people going on these "healthy eating" diets, or trying things like Weight Watchers, South Beach Diet, Jenny Craig, etc...I'm not against any of these programs and I think they are great for some people that stick with it, but a diet is just that and is only a temporary fix unless you continue with it forever. The definition of a diet is something a person eats; or the food a  person consumes. No where in that definition does it say, a diet is done for 60 days, 90 days, until you lose the weight you want, etc...you have to change your lifestyle of eating. If you diet just to lose weight and don't plan on continuing with the healthy eating lifestyle forever, you will just end up gaining all of that weight back and sometimes even more, so there is really no point.

Not that I am a nutritionist by any means, but for me personally, I am trying to lose my baby weight and get into a healthy eating lifestyle. I started by taking it slow and didn't try to cut everything cold turkey or I knew I would fail. I started by slowing down my fast food intake and then slowly cutting out my daily soda. Now I have been 2 weeks without fast food (other than chick-fil-a day) and have had a half of one soda. That is big for me and I plan to continue with cutting those two out until they are gone completely. I'm not saying I won't indulge every now and then, but I do not want it to be the norm for my diet. There will be times I enjoy a slice of pizza or two, or chow down on some fried okra or lasagna...just not as often as I was.

Recently, I have been going to the Farmer's Market to buy fresh produce and my husband and I have been cooking meals at home every day...that helps keep us away from fast food and also saves us money and we plan to continue that lifestyle. We will also be doing the same thing for Liam by making him fresh baby food ourselves at home once he starts solids in a couple of weeks...I think it is important to start them young so they know nothing different other than healthy eating :) Soon, we also want to start juicing once a day to ensure we are getting the proper nutrients and after a lot of research, we have realized how very healthy it is for us.

Ok, I didn't really mean to get into my personal new way of eating healthy, but there you have it!

The bottom line is...my food philosophy is to enjoy the food God has given us to eat and don't starve yourself because it is only a temporary fix. God created food for us to enjoy, but we need to learn portion control, to eat fresh foods and to only indulge every so often if you want to...it all comes back to one of my favorite words...balance!!

There are ways to enjoy foods the healthy way...do what works best for you and set attainable goals!!