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!

Lately I have discovered that eating canned vegetables has not helped at all with my hunger. As an experiment I recently started eating raw vegetables like crooked yellow squash, zucchini and red and yellow onions.  I simply just cut up and mixed the vegetables in a large bag with my own homemade dressing.  The ingredients are:

• Grape Seed Oil
• Olive Oil
• Flax Seed (liqued form)
• Paul Newman’s Italian dressing
• Salt (just a little here)
• Pepper
• Vegetables

I just dumped all the ingredients in a large Zip Lock bag (didn’t use specific measurements) and shook the bag to mix everything together.  Not only are the fresh vegetables better for you, they taste really good this way too. Not only is this low in calories, it is also great in the good fats. The plus side is that eating my vegetables this way seems to help with the hunger too.  Why don’t you give it a try and let me know what you think. 

Since changing my diet this past year I have learned so much about the American diet. I now read the ingredients of everything that I buy and have discovered that most of the foods we eat are REALLY bad for us.  Take for example enriched flour; do you know what that really means? It means that the flour has been processed so much that they have stripped out the good stuff and had to then enrich or add back to it the quality nutrients. Yuck!

Another example of a common ingredient in a lot of our food is corn syrup.  Have any ideas of what corn syrup does to your body? You have sensors in your body that tell you when you are hungry and when you are full. Well, corn syrup stops the sensors from telling you that you are full which results in you eating more.  Corn syrup will also spike your glucose levels which in return will cause the glucose levels to go down fast, crash, resulting in you wanting eat more.

Milk, wow I can’t say enough. The milk you buy at the grocery has been possessed so much that there really is nothing left that is good for you. Not to mention the antibiotics and hormones that goes into the cows.  YUCK!! Now if you love milk then I recommend finding a good source that doesn’t give there cows all the hormones and antibiotics. My kids can’t drink it and I don’t really like it either. Most of the time we use almond milk as a substitute which has as much calcium in it as regular milk and almonds are REALLY good for you too.

One last example of a bad ingredient that is commonly found in a lot of the foods we eat is Trans fat or hydrogenated fats.  These fats have to be one of the worst things for your body!  One of the major side effects of Trans fats is that your body can’t recognize it so it stores it in your arteries.

Make sure that you read all your labels when buying groceries.  You will be amazed at the amount of junk that is included in most of the products you buy.

Today I was looking on the net at a few weight loss stories to help motivate me (yes sometimes I need a little motivation too). I was very saddened that a lot of these people lost weight but still did not look very healthy. They didn’t talk much about weight training and cardio, just the food they ate. I mean if you are over weight and want to look good without extra skin or fat rolls you still need to work out. Exercise not only helps you loose weight, it is also good for your heart, lungs, and joints. Another great benefit of working out is the more muscle you have the more fat you burn which in turn means you can eat more( doesn’t mean you can go crazy and eat what you want all the time).

Food is definitely a big part of loosing weight but not all of it. You can only cut back on your calories so much before your body adapts to it. This brings me to the concept of my cheat day. Six days a week I eat clean like the weight loss diet that is posted on this site.  On Saturday I break free from my weekly routine and eat what I want all day long.

Not everyone agrees with the whole day as a cheat day concept.  Some experts only recommend a cheat meal but so far the entire cheat day has worked well for me (plus if it isn’t broke then don’t fix it). The cheat day also really helps me to stick to the diet all week. However, the greatest benefit of a cheat day is that it shocks my system enough so that I have many few weight loss plateaus. If you think about it, I get to eat whatever I want once a week and still come in 1-2 pounds lighter every week.

Basically my weekly routine is like this.  On Saturday morning I wake up and measure all the body parts that I want to track my weight loss progress on (arms, belly, waist, etc).  I also weigh in to keep track of my weight loss.  Just the other day I went back and looked at my measurements from a year ago and I have lost 10 inches in my waist and another 10 inches around my belly. I wrote my old measurements down and put them on my bathroom mirror to remind me that I DON’T ever want to go back there.

Once my measurements are done, I then make a B line to the fridge. About every other week, depending on time, my husband and I will calculate our body fat percentage to make sure that my body fat percentage is decreasing.  Another modification that I have made with the diet, in addition to my cheat days, is how I handle holidays and special occasions.  Last year during the holidays or special occasions we didn’t budge from the diet during the week. 

Now days we allow more flexibility in our diets during the holidays and/or special occasions.  For example if it is my mom’s birthday I will enjoy a small piece of cake. However, I will do ~ 10 extra minuets of cardio the next morning. My body now seems to burn calories better than it use to and the holiday or special occasions do not seem to hurt my overall progress.  As long as I am conservative about everything I can quickly get back on track to losing 1 - 2 pounds a week even after a fun holiday.

When I first started my diet the rules were strict but simple, I could basically eat anything with the exception of milk, flour, processed foods, and sugar. So, for the most part that left me cooking all my meals and avoiding anything that came out of a bag or box (excluding rice). A few months after I started the diet my husband and I discovered that our son was allergic to sugar. Just in case you were wondering, at that time we had not changed the kid’s diet yet. My son was very hyper all the time and we were frustrated.  I read a great book about kids with ADD and ADHD and WOW, was it an eye opener! The author of the book explained how diet can play a large role on kid’s behavior. I decided to cutout the refined sugars and processed foods from my kid’s diet to see if it would help with my son’s hyperactivity.  After all, if it worked it was a win-win situation, not only is this an opportunity to reduce my son’s hyperactivity but it is also a chance to teach my kids how to eat and live a healthy lifestyle.

I started carefully reading labels on all the foods that I bought my kids. I was SHOCKED at how much crap is in the food we eat!  My first journey was to find bread with no processed sugar in it and of course no artificial sweeteners in it either. I asked my mother if she knew of anything and she directed me to the health section of our local supermarket to find Ezekiel 4:9 bread. I bought a loaf of the Ezekiel bread and really liked the way it tasted (kids really liked it too). However, the downside is that Ezekiel bread is a lot more expensive than the “regular” bread that I was previously buying. So I became determined to find an inexpensive and healthy substitute for the Ezekiel bread. To make a long story short I went on a wild goose chase and read the ingredients for just about every brand of bread there is in 5 different supermarkets.  To my disgust all of them had at least 2-4 sources of processed sugars and many of them also contained preservatives.  I decided to spend the extra money for quality and have not looked back sense.When you look at the ingredients of the Ezekiel bread you will notice that it contains a fair amount of protein, fiber and non-altered natural ingredients. The bread is also sweetened with natural products such as organic honey and organic molasses (depending on which type of bread you buy).  I personally think that the bread taste great and I highly recommend you give it a try. My family’s personal favorite is the Cinnamon Raison with a little almond butter on it. YUM YUM!

P.S.  The change in my son’s diet worked.  We allow our kids to eat anything they want on Saturdays (I’ll explain why at another time) and can tell a big difference in our son’s behavior from the days that he eats a clean and healthy diet.