Our diet change

I am going to try to put together, on screen, our changes in the nutrition area. The best place would be to go over why we think a diet change is in order. Then I will tell you what changes we are making. And lastly I will try to explain why we have chosen to go with the particular changes we have chosen.

Why we are making a change:
I believe I have mentioned some of our reasons previously, but to make this an all inclusive post I will mention them again. All of us in our family have some allergy or allergies to food, or environmental agents (pollen, dust, or animals). Although allergies are considered "normal" because so many people have them, they are a sign of our bodies responding wrongly to normal things. Allergies are not normal to have when you are healthy. I am not saying that every allergy is in response to a poor diet, but I would hazard to guess that many are. Even poor Jonah has a total body rash that is going on two weeks now. I realized that it started when I started eating yogurt daily. Other problems we are experiencing are poor skin health (a rash on Jeremiah's ankle, Saoirse's chicken skin, and pimples), poor hair health (Saoirse's hair has only been really growing this year, and she is 4 and a half), and lack of energy. We also have three overweight family members. That is really not healthy. Plus three, possibly four of us are having problems with interstitial cystitis. Not a fun thing to be sure. So those are the main complaints here. I know there are others, but they are more minor.

The changes we will be making:
I'm not sure whether to tell what we are taking out of our diet or what we are adding....maybe both. The things we will be taking out:
most meat (chicken as a condiment once per week, plus meat at Sunday lunch)
almost all dairy (I will be using a bit of dairy in some of our homemade salad dressings at first)
white flour
sugar (we will be using natural sweeteners like honey or agave or dates)
just about everything processed (I will use some canned tomatoes, and in a pinch canned beans)

Things we will be adding:
Kombusha tea
sprouts (high nutrients)
lots and lots of veggies and fruits
wheat and barley grass juice (grown here, juiced and stored as "ice" cubes, added to our green smoothies)
nuts and seeds

Why these particular changes:
I have read many books on nutrition. Basically I have read on both ends of the spectrum-all raw to lots of cooked foods and meat. I was thoroughly confused. I made sure to see what scripture had to say on the matter. We have the fact that Adam and Eve were vegetarian. And it wasn't until after the flood that God gave us the animals to eat. And with that came restrictions on what types of animals were OK to eat. Now my own thoughts on the matter is that I don't see how people back in Biblical times would have been able to eat as much meat as we do today. Plus I don't think that they had all the pesticides, antibiotics, and growth hormones we do today! I'm thinking they didn't have any of that :-) So our meat supply is a bit tainted to say the least. So not only are we probably eating a lot more meat than they did, but ours is pretty contaminated. I do think that the dietary laws are still good for us today. Again, these are only my thoughts on the matter. There is the vision that Peter has of the sheet of food (some of it being "unclean") coming down from heaven and God saying that whatever He has calls clean is clean. Now people say that that scripture nullifies the dietary laws. However I think that may be taking the vision out of context. First it was a vision. Second the context is that Peter didn't think the Gentiles should be preached to as they were "unclean". And I think God is making a point that if He calls something clean than it is clean, no matter what we may think of it. I liken it to when I ask one of my children to do some very common task. If they make a fuss over it I may say something like, "If I want you to go outside and run around the house 50 times than I would expect you to do so." Now I am not telling them that is what I want them to do---run around the house. I am taking something that I wouldn't normally tell them to do to show them that I expect them to obey me, even if they think I am going overboard (on the common thing I asked them to originally do). I hope that made sense. I don't claim to be a theologian :-) So don't take my word for it. You can find the passage I speak of in Act 10. So all of that to say we will be eating very little meat. We will be eating lots of veggies (raw and cooked), and lots of fruit. These have micronutrients our bodies need that they can not get from meat or processed foods. I will be making sure they get nuts and seed for proper fats and omegas. We will be eating more beans for protein. Although plants have protein as well. I was thinking of seeing how we would respond to gluten free, but that may be too much of a jump. I want to see how we respond to the above changes first. I believe that dairy and sugar are our biggest problems. I will be making our own bread products (I do a lot of that now). I have not been good about soaking my flour before baking. I think I may try sprouting the wheat first, dehydrating it, then grinding it and keeping it in the freezer so I can use it as I need it. So how is this going to look in real life? Well, this next month I will probably be making more "designer" meals until I get the hang of this and we settle into more simpler fair. Below is what our menu will look like.

Menu:
Each week of meals will be repeated for the month.

Breakfasts:
Green Smoothies, except for Saturday when we will have whole wheat pancakes with fruit topping.
Green smoothies will consist of such items as frozen fruit, fresh fruit, spirulina, wheat or barley grass juice cubes, powdered flax seeds, tahini (sesame seed paste), and of course greens.

Morning snacks:
Morning snacks will be on the heavier side since we will be having a liquid breakfast. They will be some of the following: nut balls, chocolate pudding and whipped topping (pudding made of bananas and avocados, the topping made with macadamia nuts and rice or soy milk), raw fruit pies, ice cream (frozen fruit put through the food processor).

Afternoon snacks:
These snacks will be on the lighter side. Just plain fruit, veggies with a dip, and popcorn.

Lunch:
tortillas with a hummus spread, filled with chopped veggies and sprouts
leftover soup
oatmeal and fruit
tabouli salad
whole wheat pita bread with bean spread and greens, or all fruit jam and nut butter
I haven't figured out Saturdays lunches yet
Sundays lunches at church

Dinner:
mac and "cheese" (crock pot dish)--there is no dairy, the sauce is made by cashews, white beans and seasonings/ salad
slow cooker pot pie (crock pot dish)--potatoes and other veggies, no meat
black-eyed peas and Swiss chard with Soba noodles (crock pot dish)/ salad
chicken salad
focaccia with veggies or veggie pizza/ salad
bean burgers on whole wheat buns/ salad
soup--our first may be tomato

Our dinner salads will be mostly "common" tossed salads, but some may be more elaborate, and some may be left over tabouli salad.

If I think of it I will take pictures throughout the week of our meals to do a picture post of our new diet. So there you have it, our new diet adventure begins February and we are giving it a year to see what kinds of results it will have on our health.

On top of diet changes we will be adding in more activity. I have already started exercising. And my plan is to get the kiddos outside at least four times a week for an hour. Thirty minutes being active-running around, biking, jump rope....

***new posts on the girls' blogs***