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Today, I was asked if I had written a post addressing how I removed processed foods from my diet. I hadn’t, so it seemed like a good topic for a few hundred words.
The truthful answer is longer than I can write in one post, which is why I am constantly creating content to help you do what I did along this journey, but I’ll give you the “Reader’s Digest condensed version” here. What follows are what I consider to be the top three things my husband, Rob, and I did to change our eating habits, our health and our weight forever.
- We learned to read food labels. The food labeling practice is deceptive. Because you have to advocate for yourself to stay healthy and vital, we learned we had to decipher the back of the package. The front is advertising and you can’t find the truth there. It’s buzz words and hooks to get you to pick up package in the hope you won’t bother to look at the back. The back of the package is where you get the truth…sort of. You still have to dig to be sure what appears to be what you’re getting is really what you’re getting. The serving size matters and the nutrition information matters, but ultimately, you have to read the ingredients. That is where you get the truth. For example, a claim of zero trans fat (partially hydrogenated oils) in the nutrition label may translate to actually finding partially hydrogenated oils in the list of ingredients. Become a label reader.
- We stopped eating out except for the occasional event. You have control over what you eat if you make it yourself; in a restaurant, you are at their mercy to choose good quality ingredients. A restaurant’s bottom line is important, so the inclusion of cheaper oils, for example, is a high probability. Additionally, eating out is expensive, so cooking good healthy food at home allowed us greater latitude when including more organic choices in our food purchases.
- We purged out pantry, our fridge and our freezer. We got the stuff out of the house we didn’t want to eat so we wouldn’t be tempted. (If it’s there, eventually you will eat it.) A lot of food that was still good, but was off our list went to the food pantry. We eliminated sugar, bad oils, processed flour, preservatives…anything in a box really. We also stopped eating anything with a long list of ingredients and anything processed like soy bacon and soy sausages (I loved both of these!) Get temptation away from you, and keep it away from you.
I’m busy writing my next book, “The Major Method”, which will help you do what I did, eat the way I eat and find a new, delicious way to better health both mental and physical. It will have much more than a blog post to share all the information that’s so important for you to have to protect yourself against the damage our Standard American Diet is doing to us all.
We have to advocate for ourselves and for our health in the face of Big Food…Resist!
This article was originally published on https://thinstronghealthy.com/how-i-removed-processed-
foods-from-my-diet/How may I serve you in your quest for optimal mental and physical health?
Cheryl A Major
Cheryl A Major lives in Westford and is a
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Consultant. Her TV show, Thin Strong Healthy, airs on
WestfordCat and is an offshoot of her blog http://ThinStrongHealthy.com Cheryl offers ongoing
information, live and online courses and personal health coaching to help you feel better and be
healthier. Follow Cheryl on Twitter @CherylAMajor. She is also a full time residential Realtor
with Coldwell Banker with more than 25 years experience.
Her new book, “Eat Your Blues Away” in which she chronicles her recovery from depression
is now available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback!
