Long Live Our Latest Fad!

My four girls and I tend to mimic each other. When one gets into something, we all do!  Calls go out about what we discovered that really works and we all have to try it.  We've gone on exercise binges together, money saving binges together, and organization binges together.  Our latest "fad", as my husband calls it, was couponing.  Stacie showed us how we could get a lot of groceries for free or a few cents using coupons and watching the sales and we were all hooked.  We scrambled around trying to find as many newspapers as possible, then spent hours upon hours cutting and organizing the coupons we had.  Preparing a shopping list, instead of a few minute ordeal, could easily turn into a couple hour ordeal.  We stuck with it a few months, but then we started realizing how much of it was pure D junk food that we were bringing home.  Slowly we realized, no matter how much we saved, this was not the way we wanted to spend our time or the way we wanted to eat.  Even though each of us have enough free toothpaste to last us the rest of our lives, no one was more glad to see that phase leave than us!  Now, on to the next one............

And that is healthy eating.  We are all learning what the healthiest most natural foods are, how to find them, how to cook them, and how to get our families to eat them.  I've told my husband that this isn't one of our fads, this one will last!  He just laughs and says "We'll see".  Who can blame him?  Heck, we all laugh at ourselves!  But..........I really think this one is a keeper.  Jamie went to whole, natural foods about a month before we did, and she was able to lose the ten pounds that have plagued her ever since her last baby.  The others are learning just how much fun they are having cooking and serving their family good, wholesome meals that they feel really good about.  Karen pretty much started this trend when she started a private group on FB about healthy eating and it just exploded with people wanting to learn also.  We have a couple people on there who are very knowledgeable and have given us loads of information.  I know I have learned some things, that are quite honestly, completely different than what doctors have told us.  Since I have a husband who is a cardiac patient, I didn't just believe everything that I saw, but having checked it out and researched it, I found that most everything new we were learning is fact.  And then I read an article by Dr. Oz, a cardiologist himself, who validated all of the things I had been questioning, like the benefits of whole dairy products and coconut oil.  I've learned that when you take all the fat out of milk and other dairy products, you are left with too high a concentration of natural sugars which interacts in a potentially harmful way with your insulin.  And that the fat in butter is a lot better for you than the fat in margarine and it has nutrients like vitamins A & D instead of just being empty calories.  And that coconut oil, once thought to be the worst possible saturated fat known to mankind is actually full of nutrients that majorly boost your immune system, and in countries that use a lot of coconuts and coconut oil there is hardly any cardiovascular disease.  BUT, the most important thing is MODERATION!  Such a hard concept to grasp on to!  But, I have found, that when I know that what I am using is high in fat, I pay attention to how much I am using and portion size whereas when I was using low or no fat, I didn't.  

 I do have to admit, eating this way does make me feel better and have more energy.  And feeding Mark whole, unprocessed foods, and paying attention to what we are eating feels a lot better than worrying about what I've been feeding him that might be clogging up that "Oh so precious" new plumbing in his heart!   So here's to our latest "fad" - may it live a long and healthy life!