The Game Plan

In order to be successful at this clean-eating thing, I need a really good game plan.  I think my objectives may change slightly, adjust around the edges a bit as I go, but for now I believe I have a pretty clear picture of what my "New-tritional" life will look like.

First and foremost, I aim to eliminate as much sugar as possible from my diet.  With diseases like RA, inflammation is the enemy, and from what I've learned over the past few months, sugar is a major cause of inflammation within the body.

Next, I will re-eliminate sodas.  Diet soda is pretty much an addiction for me, and like many recovering addicts, I've been off and on the wagon a lot.  Although diet sodas don't contain sugar, they are full of artificial sweeteners (just as bad), and I'm recently learning what the ingredient phosphoric acid can do to your bones.  Remember, mine are already showing significant signs of deterioration.

Another major goal is to eliminate processed foods from the majority of our weekly diet.  I believe that my family can realistically follow a clean-eating lifestyle about 90% of the week, with an allowance for one meal PER WEEK where we loosen the rules a bit.  Hey, life takes unexpected turns and my kids are still in the age of Saturday morning birthday parties.  'Nuff said.

In addition, I will prioritize buying food with integrity.  To me, this means switching to organics fruits and vegetables (locally grown when possible).  This is a huge and scary step for a beginner like me.  I'm more intimidated by farmers markets than I was by the health food store (see first post).  Thank goodness I've found an organic fruits/veggies delivery service.  Right to my door once a week, until I start to build up a little confidence and know how to be intelligent when, to market I go!  It also means all my poultry and beef purchases will be free of hormones, antibiotics.  Ethically treated chickens and cattle.  Grass-fed (and grass-finished when possible) beef.  Cage-free eggs.  I don't even remember what else I'm supposed to look for, but I have it written down for when I shop!

So, here are my rules so far:

1.  No sugar or any other kind of artificial sweeteners

2.  No Sodas.

3.  No highly processed foods (5 or fewer ingredients, all of which I can pronounce)

4.  Ethically raised and junk-free poultry, beef and eggs

I need so much help following even these four simple rules, and so I'm relying a lot on some great resources to keep me in line.  I have received no benefits from endorsing the following companies, brands, or people.  They have no clue I exist.  But they're helping me, and for that reason alone, I want to recognize my most valuable resources to date:

1.  Maximized Living Nutrition Book

This has been the most comprehensive overview of what I need to change and why.  Written by doctors, it provides just enough science to satisfy my curiosity and so much practicality (how do I DO this?) to help me begin.








2. The blog "100 Days of Real Food".  Talk about comprehensive and practical.  Lisa Leake and her team at "100 Days of Real Food" are practically handing me every tool and encouragement I'll ever need on a silver platter.  Unless silver is an unhealthy metal on which to serve food.  In that case, I'm sure she's handing me everything on a BPA free, recycled glass platter.  From videos of her own pantry to articles on switching over picky kids' palates to simple rules to follow, I am a huge fan of her practical approach to this very daunting decision.

3.  Another website that has helped me put together some meal ideas and shore up my recipes - Against All Grains.  This website is Paleo, and I do not intend to follow all the Paleo rules.  But I also do not need to rely so much on grains and it is helping me get a little more creative about my meal planning.

4.  The Fit Bit.
To be fair, I don't even have it yet.  It's coming at the beginning of next week, and I really couldn't be more excited.  Several friends have recommended this amazing little wireless activity and sleep tracker to me.  One of the biggest contributors to my health issues has been lack of exercise and lack of sleep.  This little gadget tracks BOTH and lights up all pretty when you reach certain goals you've set.  Since no one will follow me around handing me gold stars every time I make a wise choice or go to bed on time, I'm pretty excited about this little tool that will (fingers crossed) capture MAJOR improvements in my health as I start to incorporate all this clean eating!

5.  Friends & Family.  I wish I could put a link to this one or a picture that included all of them. But honestly, one of my biggest tools for success is knowing that I have a team of people who love me and are rooting for me in this endeavor.  I hope that, if you're reading this, you have a really good team surrounding you, too.  This is a place where quantity doesn't count near as much as quality.  One good friend, one good accountability partner - and you're blessed beyond measure!

6.  Faith.  I list this last because it's honestly the most important one.  As I stated in my starting post, I believe God is leading me toward a new thing nutritionally.  Any resource I've found is just a gift from Him through a creative avenue.  And any single good choice or string of good choices and successes is only achieved in the strength and power He gives me.  Phil 4:13 says "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

I assume that means I can even shop at a Farmers Market.

(I'll keep you posted!)

God is Doing A New Thing

Isaiah 43: 18-19 (NIV) says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland."

Several months ago, I sat in a chair in a hallway outside my doctor's office, texting messages to several friends who were waiting to hear what all the previous months' tests, xrays, MRIs and bloodwork had shown.

Grateful that the diagnosis wasn't worse, I still felt overwhelmed by what the numbers indicated.  Auto-immune ranges were way off.  The rheumatoid factor was highly elevated.  Indications of osteopenia in my hips "prominent for patient's age" and low, way too low, absorption of critical vitamins in my system.

I typed the words into the phone over and over again, "It appears I have rheumatoid arthritis."  After years of debilitating pain, there was now a label for it.  The label felt very confusing.  But there was also a plan.  That felt very good.

I love my general practitioner.  She is a relatively young, beautiful, energetic, and crazy-smart physician.  She laid out a course of treatment meticulously and firmly for me.  It would include a one-month regimen of steroids.  And from the very start, the goal was to taper it back to nothing within that month.  The inflammation was out of control in my body and I could hardly walk.  I wasn't sleeping much at all.  I was (and still am) overweight, which just added to the symptoms of pain and general malaise.  The steroids would help quickly combat the inflammation and get my body to a better starting point.

After that?  My doctor urged me to fight these ailments nutritionally.  She gave me a book.  She encouraged exercise.  I purchased isotopic vitamins (no junk added... just 100% absorption of what my body was critically lacking).  And I was instructed to eliminate sugar from my diet.  

That night, at home, I poured over the most comprehensive literature I've ever read about nutrition.  Whole foods, grass-fed beef, cage-free chicken, Non-GMO, gluten, pesticides, the good stuff and the bad stuff all kind of piling together in one big heap of must's and mustn'ts.  I took notes.  I cried.  I took more notes.  I walked away from it.  My husband cautioned me not to go overboard all at once.  I think I yelled a little at him.

Over the next few days, I dog-eared pages of books.  I gathered cookbooks from friends.  I pinned.  I read blogs and websites and attempted to make grocery lists.  

I visited a health food store for the first time and walked around like I was a tourist in a foreign country.  I haphazardly placed items in my basket that I recognized by name ("ooh, flaxseed, almond butter, almond flour"... in they went).  I spent a crazy amount of money on a paltry pile of strange-to-me foods.  My 8 year old son, who was with me, asked where the pop tart aisle was.  I felt the burning glare of judgement from the health-savvy patrons around us as I attempted to laugh off his question too loudly and too awkwardly to convince anyone that he wasn't kidding.

Feeling overwhelmed and out of place at the healthy grocery store, I went back to the grocer that I know and love.  But it was now strange and foreign, too.  For years, I'd watched my weight by reading nutritional facts.  Fat grams, fiber content, calories.  Yet none of that seemed to matter anymore.  Now, I wandered the aisles, pulling down packages and scanning the ingredient lists for the very first time.  It took me 2 hours to shop, as item after familiar item had to be placed back on the shelves when I discovered it was full of sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, or a variety of preservatives.

I cried a lot over the next few weeks.  I think I was actually grieving the loss of beloved fast-food runs, quick convenient lunches, and potato chips.  Oh my word... the potato chips.  But I tried very, very hard to comply.

For about a month, I ate well.  Fresh vegetables and a small amount of fruits paired with lean meats that had been raised ethically and absent of antibiotics, hormones, etc made up my meals.  I slept better, I felt better, I began to notice the pain virtually disappear.  I also gave up drinking diet sodas during this time.  While I continued to drink my morning coffee (black), the only other fluid I consumed was water.

After one month of clean-ish eating, Christmas arrived, along with the casseroles, sweets, and side dishes (mainly potato side dishes) that I adore.  Not wanting to deprive myself of a happy holiday or make my hosts at various Christmas meals feel uncomfortable, I partook of the feasts with abandon.

For 2 weeks, it didn't seem to matter, so I continued to slide back into my comfortable old habits.  But around 15 days into my "backslide", the pain came roaring back.  Ferociously.  I remember waking one morning, incredulous.  "This is how bad that old pain was!?!?"  "I can't believe I used to feel this way every day!"  

But old habits die hard.  And my old habits were going to take one last fighting stand.  Although I was well-read by this point and had bookmarked and frequented many websites to continue to learn, I was being stubborn.  Life in 2013 had been incredibly hard for our family.  We lost my dad to a terrible rare disease in August of 2013.  My son was having some major struggles that consumed both his and my constant thoughts and prayers.  And the RA diagnose?  Well, I just filed that under the column "Crappy Things That Happened To Me In 2013".

All the while, though, my prayers, encouragements from friends, and God's own leading through my daily Bible reading kept leading me back to Isaiah 43:18-19 (see above).  I believe God is doing a new thing, because I believe His Word is true.  I believe that in a macro-sense (God IS doing a new thing in this world until the day Christ Jesus returns).  And I believe it in a micro-sense (God is doing a new thing in me because He is constantly transforming me to look more and more like Jesus).

And somehow, that new thing He's doing in my life? It needs to be reflected in how I treat this body.  This vessel He has given me.  

I want to be very respectful of my young son's privacy, but I will add that I am also convinced that many of the things he's dealing with may be related to a lack of nutrition in his body.  My great motivation to begin a new thing nutritionally circles around more than my own needs.  I am pulling that sweet child, his adorable little sister, and my already-amazingly healthy and inspiring husband tightly into God's promise alongside me.  

I'm in a wilderness where the right choices are unfamiliar and the best foods are elusive.  I'm trusting that God will make a way in this wilderness.

Where I once enjoyed a healthy lifestyle in my teens and early 20's, I look around me now at a wasteland of bad choices, saddening diagnoses, and a scale that buckles under the weight of it all.  I'm trusting that God will provide streams of refreshment and healing in the wasteland.  

I'm starting this blog to document what it looks like for a junk-food junkie to start from the beginning.  I'm no expert but I'll be relying heavily on those who are.  I'll chronicle the victories, the setbacks and the resources that I'm finding to help me find my way.  And I hope this platform will hold me accountable.

Welcome to "A New-tritional Thing".