Star Struck

Yesterday I met someone who is a hero to our family.  It was an amazing experience.  There were some embarrassing moments, but I will share those later.  I wanted to first share the journey that our family has been on with food.  This is about two years in the making and is still a work in progress.  When you work on changing your diet, it certainly doesn't happen all at once, especially when you have children.

Two years ago I was in a Starbucks ordering my favorite drink....hot chocolate.  In the winter I have a lot of these and have finally broke that addiction.  Anyway, I was waiting on my drink and saw a flyer on a bulletin board about a free cooking class.  I wrote the email address down and went home to sign up for the class. I attended the class and learned about cooking healthy foods.  This was the start of the journey for us.  The girl that had the class was going to a nutrition school to become a health coach.  I struck up a relationship with her while we were in California and started learning some new things about food.  I attended another class that she held about making green smoothies.  At that time I had never heard about that.  So I ordered a green smoothie book (The Green Smoothie Diet by Robyn Openshaw), read up on it and went to the class to learn how to make it.  I took Mya with me and they taught the kids how to read labels on food at the grocery store and what ingredients to avoid.  I went home and started talking about smoothies to Dan.  Since he doesn't like to eat raw vegetables at all, I figured it would be a way to get some nutrition in his body too.  I read up on juicing and compared that with smoothies and decided to go the smoothie route.  At the same time I began eliminating things in our diet like juice, cow's milk, high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils.  Right away we felt a difference in our bodies. I had to learn how to cook different to accommodate not having these ingredients anymore.  I started making homemade snacks for the family, decreased meat consumption and increased fruits and vegetables. We were given a blender (thanks Nana and Papa!) and I made my first green smoothie.  Did you know that a quart of green smoothie has 10-15 servings of fruits and vegetables and it is only 200 calories?  The average American eats 1 serving of fruits and veggies a day.  I felt so empowered to be feeding my kids handfuls of greens each day.  And they loved it!  Fast forward two years later and we are still drinking green smoothies.  Now I am experimenting with different recipes.

My goal for myself is to eat around 70% raw foods.  The rest of the family is not eating that much, but I have been doing some experimenting with myself to see how my body responds to this.  The results are wonderful.  I have more energy, feel lighter and need less sleep.  And the oils just compliment this lifestyle.  Last week I was at a homeschooling training for three days so I did not have access to the raw foods that I do at home.  It has taken me days for my body to recover from that.  My digestive system was not the same as I needed those good foods in my body.  I was so interested in how my body responded. The girls eat more plant based food during the day too, just not as much as me.  I am still learning and we are all still on this journey towards health.  Do we cheat and eat sugary, yummy treats...yep! But not nearly as often as we did a few years ago. I have read the research and can comprehend how eating whole foods keeps diseases away and even cancer.  So I decided that I don't want to wait until I have a condition to then make the changes, I want to do it now so I can keep them away.  I have the knowledge, but applying it in America is not easy.  The temptations are amazing with American food.  So I continue to read, learn and apply what works for our family.  And let me reiterate again....we do eat sweets and treats.  I like ice cream and have it every once in a while.  We just don't buy those things to have at home to reduce the temptation.

And now...for my story about yesterday.  Me and eleven other women had lunch with Robyn.  I was pretty nervous because some of the women, and especially Robyn, eat 100% whole foods.  I felt like they were watching everything I ate, even though they weren't.  It was a different experience.  But meeting Robyn was so fun.  She is a sweet woman and is beautiful.  Each of us had to introduce ourselves to the whole group and Robyn and tell our story in 90 seconds.  That was a challenge.  I was shaking in my shoes, but was so excited to have her hear about my family.  When I did talk to her one on one I was so star struck and said some silly things, I am sure. After lunch we were all getting in our cars and I decided to whip out my very large camera to get my picture taken with her.  My thinking was that I would get it done at that time before we got to the event because she would be so busy with other people.  When I approached her in the van and asked her for a picture she had her mouth full of food.  She was eating her lunch.  I was so embarrassed!  The good news is that after the event was over and the evening was drawing to a close, she remember that I wanted a picture and took one with me. So here it is and if you want to check her out go to www.greensmoothiegirl.com.