Bad habits die hard

Over the past year I have been blessed to become friends with a group of amazing women that have intrigued me to eat & cook healthier meals for my family. I married Big Daddy when I was 19. My cooking experience upon marriage was VERY limited. Big Daddy grew up in a southern country home where he was spoiled rotten by his great grandmother, "Nanny's" cooking. There was always 3 home cooked meals on the table, along with his choice of at least 2 or 3 pies. His grandmother followed her mother's footsteps & continued the good ol' country cookin' meals in her generation. All my cooking lessons & my entire menu was from Big Daddy & his family. Over the years I have mastered biscuits & gravy, fried chicken, homemade mac 'n cheese, chicken & dumplin's & the list goes on . . . Although these meals all taste fantastic, how healthy are they for my family? I never read labels & as pathetic as it sounds, I never knew how to. Slowly I began adding healthier dishes to our menu, but I never cut any of the unhealthy stuff out. Over the past year Big Daddy has had some pretty scary health issues that have made me want to learn more.

My first step was Juice Plus.

Then I began steaming veggies with our meals & trying to have a fresh salad *with dark greens available at most meals.

I started buying natural or organic if the option was available & fresh over frozen & frozen over canned.

Lunch meat changed from pre-packaged to deli.

I cut out all soda in our house (*sweet tea is my weakness though) & limited juice to natural-diluted to just drinking water.

I substituted honey for a sweetener over sugar as much as possible.

I tried using brown over white - brown flour, brown bread (whole wheat), etc.

We started our own garden.

I started participating in a co-op with fresh fruits & veggies in bulk for a lower cost - which gave us more.

Our snacks changed from chips, brownies, cookies, etc. to fruits & veggies.

Most recently I began taking MonaVie. I saw great results within less than a week. It has been such a blessing to me that I have now passed onto my husband. I am hoping I can pass it on to other family members whom I think will benefit as well. If you would like more information, please shoot me an e-mail & I would be happy to answer any questions I can. I am now officially a distributor so if you are interested in trying MonaVie I would be happy to get you started.

I looked back & see progress, but when I look forward at all I still need to learn & change there is much work to be done. A couple weeks ago Big Daddy's blood sugar levels were very low & another officer had to take him to the doctor from work. Blood work was done & the report wasn't good. His cholesterol, good fats, bad fats - everything was high. The time has now come for us to start getting rid of the bad stuff . . . Bad habits die hard for this stubborn country boy though. I called my dear friend, Michelle, who is a wealth of information & my personal nutritionist for advice. Knowing my stubborn man she took it easy on me. My homework was to cut out any foods with high fructose corn syrup & any hydrogenated ingredients. Just 2 things - this was going to be easy! Ummm . . . yeah, not as easy as I thought. Here is a list of some of the foods I was buying with these in them:

Bisquick
Mrs. Butterworth's syrup
cereals (long list)
Peter Pan peanut butter
frozen pizzas
ranch style beans
enchilada sauce
refried beans
tortillas

It has been challenging finding alternates for some of our "regulars"; however, learning to read labels has been eye opening for me. Looking at the cereal box labels almost made me cry when I realized what we were giving our kids first thing in the morning. On most cereals the main ingredient is SUGAR.

I have also been reading Smooth Stones Academy's nutrition posts. Jennifer offers great advice & alternatives for nutrition & even recommends certain brands to shop for. I am taking notes, but I'm not quite there yet. In the future I would like to add to my list of "No, No's":

BHT in cereals
nitrates or nitrites
synthetic dyes
BHQ
MSG
sodium benzoate
EDTA

I am a work in progress & would love any advice or recipes . . . PLEASE!