Whole 30 Sneaky Sugars

We have lost our minds and are trying the Whole30 Healthy Eating for 30 days program. And while there is plenty of internet info about what you can eat and recipes, we are struggling with the sugars. 

Ultimately, one of the goals is to eliminate sugar in your diet. For some whole30 can mean a Number of things - but we embrace the "let go of the sugar crave" help. 

I found this great sugar reference on whole30.com when a friend Recommended a by product of alcohol sugar often found in gum. You guessed it, not only is xylitol not allowed, no sugars are allowed and No Gum! 

Whole 30 Sneaky Sugars

Please don't be a close talker with me until February. Im using loads of onions and garlic as a seasoning, and now since gum is out . . .  Just keep your distance.

Here is the graph if sneaky sugars to watch out for, yes read labels!! 

See the website here >> https://whole30.com/downloads/whole30-sugar.pdf

Whole 30 Sneaky Sugars

Make mistakes, breathe, reflect and laugh.out.loud. (When crying from missing sugar.)

Why we Eat Cereal for Dessert, and NOT for Breakfast (Making a Better Choice)

The demands of the world dictate that cereal must be consumed by children. How could I be so cruel and keep such a treat away from them? Those circular colorful treats, that taste sweet, and even change the color of the milk... We like them as a topping on yogurt or as a dry snack. I know, are you reading the right blog? YES! I am the same mostly healthy mom trying to accommodate my children/s demands and their healthy needs. Can you imagine such a conversation at home "Hey Kids, We aren't ever eating cereal again for breakfast?" Oh the Drama. . . But When I DID SAY "What do you guys think of moving Cereal to Dessert Time?" was a success.

I recently picked up a thrift store copy of the book "Eat This Not That, Supermarket survival guide." I saw this book authors presentation on some talk show years ago... it was informative, extremely. We put in so many unknown ingredients into our bodies when we eat packaged foods. I can't even pronounce some of the ingredients!
 

So when I came across the book I purchased it. Just initially thumbing thru I saw the few packaged items I do purchase listed and they're great alternative ideas. As well as some great sauces and condiments that are referenced (which I have totally forgotten about as a nice way to dress up meals and for sides). These said sauces and condiments are a nice way to substitute flavor as you remove unnecessary calories to help in weight loss/maintenance.

I recently lost over 25 pounds last year, and not intentionally which is the ironic part. It was totally accidental loss... I swapped white sugar for agave nectar in my coffee, I added more fruits to my day as a snack, I stopped buying kid selected desserts and went back to old habits of only High Quality Desserts. I Made a lot of other changes in our home before this 25 pound weight loss and you can read about them here.

As we all should know weight gain, and excess weight gain especially, comes from
1. Eating Larger portions (calories) then our bodies and activity levels need, and
2. Eating excess amounts of sugar, often unknown quantities to us!

(*As an Aside: I read an awesome article in National Geographic magazine on the history of sugar and how we have arrived at our current American sugar intake levels. The results were SHOCKING as consumers average 22 teaspoons of added sugar per day!  I personally lost over 25 pounds this last year and I credit my number 1 reason for successfully loosing the weight and keeping it off is switching from white sugar to agave nectar. I'll have to write a separate post about this amazing life changing step that I took. And NO I didn't completely cut out sugar/y sweets because I want to enjoy the finer things in life....see the post.)

In "Eat This, Not That" the authors cover many packaged products, including cereals. The little thought bubble inserts are loaded with helpful information on MAKING A BETTER CHOICE. The book lists brands of popular cereal, and their top nasty ingredients and grams of sugar per serving. On the opposing page they list alternative brands and better choice ideas in the cereal category including healthier or better ingredients and lower sugar quantities. However the best information on this page was our life changing decision... "Treat Cereal as Dessert."



Our visit to Wagner Farm, where a cow took great interest in us. We always ask the kids "Where did our food that we are eating come from?" If they can't tell me it is usually a quick way of identifying "highly processed" foods, like cereal.

Cereal has just as much sugar as Desserts do. Do you serve ice cream for breakfast, eclairs, chocolate cake perhaps (and I am sorry to say toaster strudels, donuts and the like fall into the dessert category). Well for us, NO WE do NOT serve dessert for breakfast, so why should I serve cereal with the same amounts of sugar in it?

I bookmarked this page, and after dinner shared it with the family at the dinner table. I read from the book to the kids. Even my 5 year old son understood what it meant to eat one bowl of cereal or 3 candy bars... he responded "mommy, my tummy would hurt!"

Good Bye Cereal
Cereal is a great marketing campaign, similar to Orange Juice, making it a "Must Have Staple" in the American diet. Granted serving cereal is Easy and fast, and that has helped maintain the popularity. But serving sliced apples and peanut butter (which I have served for breakfast) is full of healthy natural sugars, and is in NO COMPARISON to cereal so much healthier for the breakfast eater. My kids feel full longer eating real foods - and not cereal. They don't have that pre-lunch crash after eating a sugary breakfast either.

Once last thing. My kids were all over this "Cool" idea of "eating cereal for breakfast" when we first agreed to it. And for the first 2 weeks (only) they requested cereal for dessert. Then the idea sort of lost it's appeal, I don't know why? It could be because when I do serve dessert at home 2-3 times per week, it is good quality dessert. We don't serve too many refined sugar treats. Instead we use/purchase desserts made with fine quality ingredients: real creams (not cool whip), butters (not margarines), and high quality sugars. The taste of the desserts are amazing, and sometimes very simple.

Desserts We buy:
- Lindor or E. Wendel High Qulity Chocolate Bars, and each person gets 2-3 squares for dessert. Our local fruit store carries these brands, but Godiva, and even Hersey's are "better" qulity chocolates.
- Assortments of nuts or shelled Pistachios. These always go fast.
- Desserts from international bakeries and friends travels like Truffles from France and Baklava from the Middle Eastern Grocer on my monthly visit.
- Angel Wings, or Chrusciki,  from our local bakery. A light butter treat thats great with coffee or tea.
- Good quality ice cream, gelatos and Italian ice.
- Cakes from our local bakery (not Jewel or chain store bakeries). Including Apple Pie, Fruit Pies, Small Tortes made with fresh ingredients.

THE NO COST DIFFERENCE OF QUALITY DESSERT

We have a small local bakery and a nearby international grocer that bakes there own bread and desserts daily. The ingredients are high quality and sometimes pricier then some items that sit on shelves for a few days. But in the end THE COST IS THE SAME. Why?

First of all we eat less dessert, only 2-3 times a week and the servings are small. So we consume less calories less often.

Second, because we are eating small portion and less often we are basically spending the same amount of money, just the per serving price is higher, however the quality is far improved. Quality matters (said the women who lost 25 pounds!) because your body processes natural sugar differently then highly processed ingredients that maintain a products shelf life. Your also consuming less unnatural ingredients which is also better for your body and weight loss / weight maintenance.

As I said before, helping the kids make a change to Eating Cereal for Dessert is also a great way to move away from eating cereal for breakfast.

Good luck in making changes at home for healthier eating. It's not always easy, but the journey is fun.

Orignal Post April, 2014
Make Mistakes. Breathe, Reflect, and Laugh.Out.Loud.

My Infant is Constipated - this is NOT normal!

Constipation

So I went to Grandma for this one! Babies on formula need to drink a little extra water to help wit the constipation. When I talked to my pediatrician, he gave me a nice range of options. “There is western medicine that can help with constipation, and there are many natural remedies.” That is what you want from your pediatrician! Options. A range of them so you can pick what you want to do as a parent! You should know the variety of solutions available and fit the one that meets your lifestyle and is safe for baby!

If your baby has constipation review the following possible causes and solutions.

We breastfeed and formula fed our son. I only produced 1 ounces or so of breast milk but I was determined to breastfeed. So up until 5 months I breastfed first, and then I gave the formula bottle (before I discovered the SNS, supplemental nursing system). But our older baby son still had really bad constipation in the first few weeks.

The human body naturally processes waste. And when a bowl movement happens it shouldn’t be hard to do. Common Sense, right? Well the foods we eat – mom and baby, affect our stomachs ability to process food and then the waste by product, bowl movements.

Formula AND Breast Fed Baby

If you are breastfeeding and your baby is constipated, you should try adding more fiber to your diet. Yes, mom you! Since breast milk is processed in mom’s body, if mom eats more fiber, baby gets more fiber.

For Mom:
Eat more high fiber food, including:
· 3 servings of fruits and vegetables a day (A serving of fruit is 1 apple, or 1 banana, or 1 pear. Or you can have a ¼ grapefruit, mellow or cantelope.
· drink 8 8 ounce glasses of fluid a day (but not 8 glasses of soda, coffee or caffeine tea! This causes constipation too! As does milk.)

For Baby:
After each feeding I'd mix 2 ounces of baby water (store bought, but I just boiled our city tap water and let it cool in a pitcher. That was my baby water for the day) I'd add 1 teaspoon of light karo corn syrup. It helped tremendously!! But don't add too much syrup, that cause discomfort in those newly formed baby intestines too.

· Dill tea: in Europe, women give a light, not full strength, dill tea. It helps ease gassyness and passing gas, an constipation. This too helped. And through the years I've continued to rely on dill tea for gut/ intestinal issues. And I give chamomile tea to help us relax at night, coughs, colds and sniffles. 

Do your best ... As a new mom that's all we can ask of you. And ask other moms how they help there babies. Use caution with any advice you get.

The days are long, especially in the first year, but the years are short - and our babies grew up fast!

Making a Healthy Food Change S-L-O-W-L-Y but Permanently

Examples Of Best, Great, and Good,

So now that you have paid attention to what’s around you, here's my simple category system that helped me manage my changes. I want you to know there is NOT ONE CHOICE on healthy living. We all live different lifestyles, some are fast paced, some are pay check to pay check, most are too stressful, so making a difference in your life and your families life is a process and there are always Good, Great and the best Choice. Understand that picking anyone of these choices IS A BETTER choice then doing nothing.


Example 1 - Fruit

Light Syrup/Heavy Syrup means that the fruit is canned in Corn Syrup. Usually High Fructose Corn Syrup (Read XXX on HFCS). Canned fruits in their Natural juices are best. Since there is no added preservatives. So what was in your closet? Clearly if it’s Natural Juices that’s great. And even if you have light or heavy syrups that’s OKAY too. Yeah – really. The next time you are preparing to serve the syrup canned fruit, simply rinse the fruits and dispose of the syrup before serving or baking. Yeah that’s it – rinsing the fruit and getting rid of the syrup in it IS the difference. You have just made a healthier eating choice!

 
More details on the fruit choices we make everyday... You know you should eat 5 fruits a day. (I am going to assume you do eat fruits, if not, this is an important place to start!). Eating a good variety of fruits doesn’t mean you have to buy all organic fresh fruits. But you have several good and better options:

Best
But fresh fruits (and vegetables). Make sure to wash them with running tap water and scrub the skin with a sponge. If you want to buy organic start simple. What do you eat at home? Try to buy those items fresh, and if possible try to buy 1 or 2 fresh fruits organically grown (see side bar on the top 12 preservatives used list) and switch to organic. Organic Fruits and Veggies are naturally grown, preservative and pesticide free. A BETTER choice then preservative sprayed fruits and veggies.

Great
Do you buy canned fruits? You have 2 options here.
Can you buy frozen fruits? Frozen fruits are cleaned and frozen at the peak of freshness. We don’t know yet if any9like they loose when heated) nutrients are lost because of freezing , but they are more beneficial then canned fruits. I recognize that sometimes the frozen version of fruit is out of season and too expensive so look at option b.

Good
Or If you prefer canned fruits buy fruits that are preserved in their natural juices. This way you not adding “preservatives” or added sugar to your diet. If natural juices are hard to come buy then but fruits canned in light syrup and rinse the fruits before serving. YES – get rid of the canning syrup – its not good for you.


How I learned about these options. Many places. i read reliable websites, and watch local TV that has educational tid bits. The organic advice comes from a afternoon news broadcast on WGN-TV Channel 9 in Chicago about the 12 most pesticide-laden foods. The Natural Juice versus corn syrup from the Book Mommy Made. To learn more here are some resources:

ü Mommy and me book
ü WGN TV Article & Book: induce "panic if it ain't organic," according to Renee Loux, author of "The Balanced Plate" (Rodale, $22.95). WGN TV Article web site: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2007/09/best-foods-to-b.html
ü Sited Environmental group - The Environmental Working Group – great resource!

Prenatal Iron Supplement helped me change my Life & Health

When I was pregnant with my first son I decided to stay home and be what we lovingly refer to as “family manager.” My method of learning is to read everything I can get my hands on and see where the opinions range from Left or Right, and then I decide where I stand. So I started reading about pregnancy tips, and symptoms of carrying a baby. I started to learn about the bodies natural way of dealing with illness and more importantly the natural remedies to helping some of my common troubles.

Of course I talked with my doctor about my concerns, but even in that instance there was a variety of opinions. My prenatal care and delivery doctors was a practice of five women OBGYN. The process was that you had an assigned primary doctor but then you also saw the other four women in the practice on a rotation, since we don’t know our delivery dates, anyone could be on call.

My first sons doctor said I was anemic and prescribed a prenatal iron supplement – which also caused constipation. So with that prescription I also received over the counter prenatal vitamins with a stool softener. A common issue in pregnancy apparently. Well as many moms know there are natural ways to relieve constipation for a baby. Prune juice, mixed with water is gentle enough or babies still developing intestines and is a great support for adults to. By my sons 2nd birthday I was learning even more about nutrition and things like the importance of Omega 3 fatty acids, and fiber in the diet or the lack there of as was in my case…

I was now pregnant with my 2nd son and had a different primary doctor in the same womens OBGYN practice. My anemia was significantly less of a problem (by now I had a new diet eating fairly healthy with lots of green leafy vegetables – a great source of natural iron). But here is the kicker. My doctor said "I could take a supplement for the iron but the way that iron was absorbed in pill form it wouldn’t make a significant difference for me. And it has not been proven to be an absolute necessity in pregnancy."

But do you notice what’s lacking in the information from both doctors? No discussion of nutrition or healthy eating. Granted the 2nd time around my doctor was more conservative in her "prescription" approach, but still didn’t mention overall the need for iron in my diet or during my pregnancy by encouraging specifics on healthy eating. But neither doctor (even though they were both great!) said eat more green leafy vegetables and broccoli! Wouldn’t that be the easiest solution. Yes it would.

I am not going to tackle if that’s the doctors main role in my pregnancy. An OBGYN is there to care for mom and the unborn baby within reason. Mostly looking for something wrong. If I wanted nutrition advice I should see a nutritionist right?

Well I did something about it. I continued reading and learning. I paid attention to specials on “alternative programs” on public television, snipits on evening news broadcasts about new studies, and even followed some celebrity authors on these subjects. No, I am not a celebrity junkie, but I do understand the power of the media. Celebrities use there fame to get onto talk shows to inform the public about serious issues facing us today.

How to change?

Mostly importantly I understand how hard it is to change our lifestyle. It is so much easier to pop in a frozen dinner or use a pre-made meal in a box for dinner. Who wants to cook when they get home from a high stress job, a long commute and still have homework and bath time all before 9 p.m. I realize not everyone has the benefit of staying home but for our healths sake we have to find the time to make small changes.

OK my fellow family manager moms your day is hard, I know, and you manage A LOT, I know. For all of us it is really a matter of priority in our lives. Do we want to live long or should we be made a part of this big chemical experiment?

How to change? Slowly, yes slowly. Nothing changes overnight.

1. My first goal was to start thinking about the issues and what I was putting n my mouth. Yeah, that’s right, if you just start thinking about the issues discussed here you will start to change because you will inherently know what’s right for your family. There is no one formula for everyone, but a small change, any change, is positive. (For example eating white hard cheese are healthier then orange cheese, there you just made a change.)

2. I simply acknowledged that some of these things talked about regarding health and packaged processed food did affect my life. "Maybe" is a common family illness so are some of those pre-made boxed products in your pantry.

3. And finally I started actively “paying attention.” Look I know your busy in the hustle and bustle of life, but take a moment to pay attention to what’s around you right now. That means if you hear about a study on the news and it sparks your interest, just pay attention. Think about the story and how it impacts your life. Maybe its an online article or newspaper article.

I have listed 3 examples below of what you can “pay attention” to in your life RIGHT NOW. Read the examples below, pick one, do it and then keep reading, and try the next perhaps.

For example:

Do you buy canned fruit – go to where you store them and read on the front label how many cans are with “light syrup, "heavy syrup” or “in natural juice.” When you cant buy fresh fruit, buy canned fruit in its own natural juice. It's cuts down on the excess sugars in the syrup version.

Did you recently spray your home with a disinfectant and you now have that “clean” smell? That's the smell of chemicals in your home. We Americans have been conditioned to think this smells are clean, meaning germ free and keeping us healthy. Not so!

What kind of laundry detergent do you use, what does it say on the Packaging? “Eco-Friendly,” key words like “Free” or “Clear,” or it just says it’ll clean your clothes?

This is my favorite tip::

Go to your medicine cabinet, take a look at your prescriptions, vitamins, lotions potions and get a mental picture – or jot down a few items on a pad of paper. Are you constantly taking mess to calm your stomach, anti acids, allergy relief, etc. maybe the problems what your eating CAUSING you these stomach issues.


Doing nothing and just continuing to do things like we have always done is no longer an option. Whatever it is to male you start to make a change, you'll be glass you did. Start somewhere now. It's not just about me or you anymore, we have babies to care for.

"The days are long, the years are short."