{"id":16807,"date":"2014-07-10T11:59:56","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T17:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foodembrace.com\/?p=16807"},"modified":"2014-07-10T11:59:56","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T17:59:56","slug":"on-clean-eating-and-accepting-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/2014\/07\/on-clean-eating-and-accepting-change\/","title":{"rendered":"On Clean Eating and Accepting Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"collards\"<\/a>When I started this blog 6 years ago, my idea of clean eats did not mean eating animal protein at every meal every day. Clean eats certainly didn’t mean eating collards for breakfast.<\/p>\n

Veggies for breakfast? Unless it’s part of an omelet, then veggies were not an appropriate breakfast food. \u00a0Home fries and hash browns don’t count as veggies. \u00a0And you can only have omelets on the weekends because they are a treat. \u00a0You shouldn’t eat eggs more than once a week, twice at most, right?<\/p>\n

I had a lot of restrictions and misconceptions about food\u00a0and I didn’t even know it. \u00a0Not until I did a clean eats challenge did it even occur to me that my thinking about food and eating were skewed.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year\u00a0I did a\u00a0clean eats challenge for 30 days<\/a>. \u00a0I made up my own guidelines, a little from\u00a0Whole 30<\/a>\u00a0and a little from\u00a0Unprocessed Month<\/a>. \u00a0The results were interesting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Basically I went Paleo-ish for 30 days. \u00a0I hate putting a label on diets and ways of eating but our society does that. \u00a0So if I have to label it, then it was Paleo with an ish<\/em> attached to it. \u00a0I fully admit that I was curious about the lifestyle and\u00a0how I would feel with that style of eating.<\/p>\n

When I first stumbled across the Paleo lifestyle and Paleo blogs, I had some conflicting views. \u00a0The foundation was\u00a0sound but I was seeing things like pancakes made with 10 eggs and 3 tablespoons of coconut flour.<\/p>\n

That made no sense to me. \u00a0That’s basically just some eggs, so why not eat the eggs and skip the “pancake” part. \u00a0This is what threw me off and made me scoff at the whole concept.<\/p>\n

But I came back to the Paleo blogs as a reference for starting my recent\u00a0clean eats challenge, because what those bloggers\u00a0were eating\u00a0fit my fundamental beliefs: \u00a0Eat real food<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That makes it super simplistic but at the core that is what the diet comes\u00a0down to.<\/p>\n

Going Paleo-ish for a while made me realize how much distress my body was in and how much it was craving whole nutrient foods. Suddenly I was eating eggs like it was my job and having soup for breakfast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Potato,<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally my body felt at peace and nourished. \u00a0I was feeling way more satisfied than I had ever felt before. \u00a0More deeply satisfied than when I was “healthy” and eating bowls of oatmeal everyday for breakfast.<\/p>\n

As soon as the challenge stopped, I\u00a0slipped back to old habits and\u00a0I immediately felt like crap.<\/p>\n

I could tell my body was craving more nourishment and\u00a0was not pleased when that nourishment went away.<\/p>\n

If you would have told me 4 years ago that I would be adopting a Paleo-like lifestyle (besides lifting heavy things, I’d rather run or punch something), I would have laughed at you and walked away thinking you were full of the crazy.<\/p>\n

The thing is\u00a0our bodies are constantly changing as we mature and\u00a0with those changes our \u00a0bodies’ needs also change. \u00a0We\u00a0have\u00a0to be aware of what our bodies want so that we can provide it those things. Sometimes those needs conflict with our philosophies about food and food sources. \u00a0Sometimes those needs conflict with everything we’ve been told by “health professionals”.<\/p>\n

We have to come to terms with that in some way\u00a0because denying our body what it needs can lead to problems down the road.\u00a0My definition of clean eats has certainly changed over the years and is vastly different from when I started this blog.<\/p>\n

My idea of what meals should consist of is the polar opposite of how I used to think.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until I did that challenge that I realized how crappy I \u00a0was treating myself. \u00a0 How much my body was lacking proper nourishment.<\/p>\n

Now I’m on the path to recovery and healing my body and it feels good. \u00a0I’m back in the kitchen and making awesome meals. \u00a0I’m inspired again to create, nourish, and nurture. \u00a0That’s what started this blog and I’m so happy to be back in that space again.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t be on this road to healing\u00a0if I wasn’t willing to accept change and toss aside old beliefs and habits.<\/p>\n

I’ll be sharing a lot more about this change and thoughts and reflections on it. \u00a0Perhaps you’re starting a new chapter in your life as well. \u00a0If so, feel free to share! \u00a0I’m all about support and we can do this together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I started this blog 6 years ago, my idea of clean eats did not mean eating animal protein at every meal every day. Clean eats certainly didn’t mean eating collards for breakfast. Veggies for breakfast? Unless it’s part of an omelet, then veggies were not an appropriate breakfast food. \u00a0Home fries and hash browns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[58,51],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Stock_cilantro_lime_greenonion.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KYWa-4n5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16807"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}