My mother for years had tried to get me to eat real almond butter, which is basically almonds grounded up to a paste, but I just wasn’t interested in it at the time. I finally gave in and tried it but in all honesty I didn’t like the way it tasted.

Shortly after I started changing my diet I noticed that my taste buds were also changing. I decided to give almond butter a second try and ended up really liking it the second time around.  I also discovered at that time that the natural peanut butter tasted pretty good too.

Not long after that I switched to almond butter I started reading the ingredients of the peanut butter I was buying for my kids.  I couldn’t believe what I saw; basically the peanut butter I was buying was loaded in sugar and Trans fats.

So I switched to buying real peanut butter, which is very similar to almond butter except that it is peanuts instead of almonds grounded up to a paste.  At first I had to slowly mix in the natural peanut butter with the regular store bought peanut butter for my kids.  It wasn’t long that I was eventually able to get my kids on the real stuff and completely off the store brands. Now days I mix the peanut butter and almond butter together and everyone loves it.  It is a great snack and I recommend trying it on the Cinnamon Raisin bread by Ezekiel.

Enjoy!

A short while after I started the diet I got really sick. I kept getting sick and I am not just talking about the cold and flu thing, I am talking headaches, joint pain, canker sores so bad in my mouth where I couldn’t eat, yeast infections and list goes on from there. I would be sick for two weeks and then well for one week and then sick for two weeks again.I was concerned with my health and scheduled an appointment with my doctor to see if he could figure out what was going on. At first my doctor thought that I may have Lupus. After pulling blood and running a bunch of test I was surpised at the diagnosis of my problem. The problem I had was a yeast overgrowth witch is commonly known as Candida. Because I drastically changed my diet my body was like ” WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”.I visited a few natural doctors and while some helped only a little, I did learn a few things from all of them. One of natural doctors put me on a Candida diet which was much harder then my regular diet. I believe what may have contributed to my yeast problem is that Saturdays are a free day in which I can eat anything I want. Allowing myself to freely enduldge in cheat foods on Saturdays has been one of the key ingredients to my diet success. Cheat days allow me to stick to my diet over time versus the Yo-Yo diets I did in the past. The Candida diet prohibited me from eating anything processed or with yeast and sugar in it. There were no cheat days with this diet so you basically have to stick it out day after day and week after week.