The Next Step in the Journey

Part 2
Once I got home from that life-changing Bible study, I knew I needed to follow God every step of the way. Change came slowly. I had always served decent food, made meals from scratch, baked my own cookies, but we ate way too much fast-food and not enough veggies. Over the next couple of years, I slowly changed things. We adopted a whole foods way of life. Stopped processed snacks and eventually have gone dye-free. Two of my kids are very negatively affected by dyes, so they don't even dabble in the dyed candy realm, but my other two have a sucker every once in a while. Places like Trader Joe's are great for dye-free gummy bears and jelly candies. We've also found a dye-free licorice that is tasty. There are lot's of flavors, too. It's a hard mental challenge to 'take away' the treats that my kids love. I felt like a bad mom, even though I knew it was so much better for their bodies, so to find alternatives is a blessing. Most of the time these are rare treats, but I admit to going through seasons of having these treats in the house all the time.

We stopped buying conventional ice cream and switched to organic. Eggs are now cage free. We had a pig and cow raised organically and have the meat in our freezer. I'm not sure if we are going to do that again for cost reasons, so I've already scoped out Trader Joe's for their meat to see the cleanest choices when are freezer gets empty. Our veggies and fruits are all organic now. We are so fortunate to have an organic farm 20 minutes away and a Sprouts 1/2 mile away. I'm able to shop organically for reasonable prices. I try to find beans and any other item in an organic form, if I can't I will buy conventional if I have to. I know that the good choices we are making far out weigh a few non-organic items. In the last 2 months (4 years after this journey began) we started buying organic milk. We used to drink 6 gallons of milk a week, now we are down to 2. That made organic affordable. All of us used to drink milk, now only my little two kids do. My older son (14) found out that his stomach liked non-dairy milk better than cows milk. We still eat regular pasta, but we only eat pasta twice a month. Those changes were slow. I'd change one thing at a time. It's too overwhelming to throw everything out and start over. Plus, I picked up different information as I went along.

My biggest epiphany came when I watched Forks Over Knives, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, Food Inc., Hungry For Change. I watched them all on Netflix. I've re-watched them all too. These movies gave me a visual on what our food choices do to our bodies. When I think about making a bad food choice, the visuals immediately come to mind and I don't go any farther down that road. I was 3-1/2 years into the journey when I stumbled upon these movies. A couple of months later I read Eat to Live, and that was IT!