{"id":1733,"date":"2016-01-19T07:00:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T07:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betondinner.com\/?p=1733"},"modified":"2018-02-11T00:57:05","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T00:57:05","slug":"real-food-a-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/real-food-a-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Food: a journey."},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was pregnant with my second daughter, who is now\u00a018 months, I was gaining weight at lightning speed<\/em>. I was still in my\u00a0second trimester and I had already hit the high end of the recommended total weight gain. Oops? I was afraid that\u00a0carrying even more extra weight would exacerbate pregnancy symptoms (like, for instance, the\u00a0feeling that your pelvis is going to crack in half when you roll over in bed),\u00a0but I didn’t want to count\/restrict calories or go to bed hungry every night, which had been my weight-loss tricks in the past. I decided to follow the “rules” from the blog 100 Days of Real Food<\/a>. I already liked to cook and did most nights, made a lot of foods “from scratch”, and didn’t drink soda, but I also had some habits that didn’t make the cut – like eating large hunks of chocolate chip banana bread from the freezer while my older daughter was napping, and a nightly mug of ice cream (theoretically, the mug offered portion control, but you can fit A Lot of ice cream into a mug if you’re trying).<\/p>\n

Since I considered myself a healthy eater (just, y’know, with a sweet tooth), I was really, really surprised at the results of my real food experiment. After less than a week, I no longer had a blood sugar crash that required raiding the freezer for something sweet every afternoon, and I didn’t crave sweets at night, either. I didn’t even miss them. I felt…great. And during my third\u00a0trimester, I actually lost a pound! (At every doctor’s appointment, I kept waiting for someone to exclaim over the fact that I wasn’t gaining weight, so I could say, “oh, yeah, I just stopped eating sugar,” but no one ever did! Possibly\/probably because my total weight gain was still on the high end of the recommendations, and the baby was measuring right on target!)<\/p>\n

I continued to eat mostly real food for about 8 months after my daughter was born, but then we moved, and Jay started a new job, and in the course of the life upheaval my commitment to avoiding sugar and processed foods…wavered. I’ve found myself once again needing\u00a0something sweet every afternoon, and a lot of evenings, too. (Jay traveled for work in December and at the end of the week I realized I had worked my way through a large Ziplock bag of still-frozen leftover brownies. That’s a gallon of brownies<\/em>, my friends.)<\/p>\n

Turning unhealthy eating habits around in January is such a cliche, but I\u00a0know I need to make some changes. We’re experimenting with eating a lot less meat, and still sticking to the other “real food” rules that have worked for me in the past – using honey and maple syrup but not sugar to sweeten foods, whole grains instead of white flour\/rice\/etc, and packaged ingredients with 5 or fewer\u00a0recognizable ingredients. (To see the rules that I generally abide by, see the 100 Days of Real Food blog<\/a>!) Full disclosure:\u00a0I’ve decided I’m okay with some exceptions\u00a0\u2013 I don\u2019t like natural peanut butter, and tortilla chips are totally whole grain\u00a0and probably healthy<\/em>\u00a0in my book. And chocolate chips are really just misunderstood, I think. We’re also still working on improving the quality of the meat we buy.<\/p>\n

One of the most interesting results from my reader\u00a0survey<\/a> last fall was how many of you are also working to avoid\u00a0processed foods. It was the most agreed-upon in the “cooking frustrations” category, so I know a lot\u00a0of you are with me on this! The majority of my recipes use whole foods, with some notable<\/del> delicious<\/del>\u00a0obvious exceptions, or can be easily adapted (for example, using whole wheat pasta for spaghettios<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0eliminating the sugar in whole wheat pancakes<\/a>).<\/p>\n

If you or those you cook and buy food for are reluctant converts, here are a few of my favorite “easing in” recipes – i.e., they’re real food ingredients but they’re crowd-pleasers!<\/p>\n

Breakfast cookies<\/a>\u00a0– customizable and an easy replacement for store-bought granola\/breakfast bars, which often have a lot of sugar.<\/p>\n

Pita Pizzas<\/a> – the quickest path to a whole-wheat crust!<\/p>\n

Nana’s Potato Soup<\/a> – creamy and, frankly, awesome, but no rule-breakers.<\/p>\n

Oven Fries<\/a> – my favorite baked fries. I honestly enjoy them more than most restaurant fries!<\/p>\n

Brown Rice in the Oven<\/a>\u00a0– a hands-off, foolproof method for perfect brown rice every time. Good for stir-fry and burrito bowls<\/a>, adding to your favorite casseroles, or throwing into soup<\/a> for an easy noodle-replacement!<\/p>\n

Flourless Chocolate Chip Zucchini Snack Cake<\/a> – pretty much vegetables and almond butter.\u00a0(Remember, chocolate chips are my favorite exception, so judge not!)<\/p>\n

I’m planning to share my top 5 real food snacks and some other resources in upcoming posts.\u00a0Please let me know in the comments if there’s anything specific that would help you in your own real food journey! :o)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was pregnant with my second daughter, who is now\u00a018 months, I was gaining weight at lightning speed. I was still in my\u00a0second trimester and I had already hit the high end of the recommended total weight gain. Oops? I was afraid that\u00a0carrying even more extra weight would exacerbate pregnancy symptoms (like, for instance,…<\/p>\n

Read On →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/betondinner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/real-food-e1453175167780.jpg?fit=600%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59xGs-rX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1733"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4533,"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions\/4533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betondinner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}