You Feel Like What You Eat

A little of last year's harvest

Imagine feeling so tired and sluggish you’re falling asleep when ever you sit down to do something quiet, like read or check your email.

Imagine having a gut ache after you eat. Almost every time. No matter what it is.

Imagine gaining back the same 5# you recently lost, and knowing you need to watch what you eat and get back to running, but you’re just too tired and your stomach hurts too much to run anyway.

This is how I’ve been feeling lately. I am exhausted, achey and just generally feeling terrible. And I’m not the only one. My husband has also remarked to me how he isn’t sleeping well, doesn’t have much energy, and feels yucky a lot of time. I don’t think both of us feeling this way is a coincidence. We realized that we need to do something about it, starting with what we eat. It just makes sense, doesn’t it, that if you eat a bunch of garbage, you’re going to feel… like garbage.

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. Well, not really SICK, but feeling awful.

Over the course of the past year or so, E and I have been really starting to pay attention to what we eat, and more specifically, where our food comes from.  This journey began with a documentary on Netflix.

Quick explanation/disclaimer: Some of the documentary links in this post open to the Netflix site which, if you aren’t a member, you won’t be able to view. If you are a member, go ahead and sign into your Netflix account right now in another tab, and then you can view the videos.  I should also mention here that I am NOT an affiliate of Netflix, although I did apply and was rejected because they didn’t feel that I could send them viewers. They obviously don’t understand homeschoolers… But I digress… We watched all of these on Netflix, but I linked the ones I could to Hulu just in case you don’t have a membership. And I’m not affiliated with Hulu either.

This eye-opening movie was called Food, Inc (Netflix). From it, we learned the down and dirty details of where our meat, poultry, eggs, and produce originate. And it’s not pretty folks. Forget about bright shiny farm scenes and cattle scattered across green fields. Forget chickens fluttering in the farmyard. Forget about healthy, back to nature-grown corn and wheat. Throw all the animals in close confines, mix in massive amounts of manure, minimal if any sunlight, and a lot of hormones, genetic modification, and chemicals. That’s what you get when you buy today’s commercially raised food from the supermarket. Buying sides of beef and pork from a rancher, and getting our own chickens for fresh eggs were a direct result of watching Food, Inc.

The next one we watched is called Food Matters (Netflix).  This movie blew both of us away, and made us begin to think differently about how we eat. There are a number of others, and I will just list them for you.

• Ted Talks: Chew on This with Jamie Oliver (Netflix)
• Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead (Hulu)
• Forks Over Knives (Hulu)

So we’re going to do something about it. Last weekend, we bought a juicer. E and I are going to go on a juice fast. E is planning on just a weekend, and I am planning on a week. Or two. We’ll see how I am feeling at the end of a week. I know I’ll feel better eliminating some things, like dairy and/or wheat, as well as all the processed sugar I consume normally. Both of us are looking forward to a total detox.

I’m not sure yet when we are beginning this. I’ll keep an ongoing journal about it and posts will be forthcoming. Our juicer arrived today.  We bought this baby…

Join me!

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