“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” ~ Buddha

The quote in my title really resonates with me and where I find myself today. The subject of this post has been a long time coming and I could never articulate how important of a role it has come to play in my life.

After the birth of my daughter I started becoming more concerned about my diet and nutrition. I had always tried to eat healthy and had always tried to keep weight off. It was something that was always a work in progress for me, actually, and I was always jealous of other people that could eat whatever they wanted and never seem to gain any weight. I wish I had been more concerned while pregnant, but unfortunately I wasn't. I do feel more confident going into our next pregnancy. After gaining 70 lbs while I was pregnant and only losing 45 after delivery, eating healthy and 5 months of breastfeeding, I knew something had to be done. Even more important to me, I was starting to worry about what I was going to feed the munchkin to give her the best start in life.

So I started making little basic changes. Eating even more fruits and veggies, cooking more from scratch. I think the most significant thing that sticks out to me, the turning point to the complete overhaul in our family's diet, was when I started to look up ideas to get more protein into the munchkin's diet. I had been reading some ideas on websites about giving babies tofu. It was soft and plain and could be easily mixed with other foods. I had tried tofu before and had always been turned off by it, but I thought if I could mix it with other yummy stuff, this could be an option. Since I wasn't very familiar with tofu, other then that it was a product of soy, I started to do some research. My findings were disturbing to say the least. To be honest, they kinda scared the shit out of me.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail here about soy, other then that it is truly toxic for your body on many levels and particular on the bodies of children. You don't have to take my word for it, simply google "dangers of soy" and you will come up with all the information you need. Just a little research on the FDA's database of trials and studies of soy will show you the disturbing results and all of the studies that warn about its dangerous effects on the body.

Here's a list of studies that have been going on since the 1930s

I could give you links to hundreds of articles, with plenty of references and researched information with lots of stats and studies to back up this info, but if you really cared enough you could find it for yourself pretty easily. I will give you one link that sums it up pretty good, along with references and then you can decide for yourself. This explains how and why it has infiltrated our market so aggressively and how it is has been passed off as edible health food.

Soy Dangers

It took me a few months of digging and research to finally believe it. It wasn't any easy pill to swallow. I loved edamame. I had even given it to the munchkin a couple of times. I went through every item in my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer and threw out any item that had soy or a bi-product of soy in it. I couldn't believe how much stuff I had to throw out. This shit was every where. I was pissed to say the least, that this crap was being passed off as a health food and was being eaten in such large masses by unsuspecting people.

Luckily organic fermented soy is somewhat okay, as in miso soup and soy sauce (what would I dip my sushi in?!) and might actually have health benefits. Fermenting the soy changes the composition of it. Organic insures it is not made from GMOs.

My anger and the shock of what I had been learning really got me to thinking. What else were we eating that I wasn't aware of? Were there other things in our diet that were really bad for us. This started my quest to learn as much as I could, good and bad, about food and it's effects on our bodies, both emotionally and physically. I wanted to be educated and provide my family with food that was good for us, food that would make us feel good and live longer, healthier lives. After over a year of pretty intense research on the subject (seriously, almost all of my free time has been spent on this, I became pretty obsessed), I feel confident in my knowledge and where this path has lead me to today. There is still so much to learn and find out, and I get really excited about new discoveries every day. It's not just the food that I am so interested in, but the science behind how it effects our bodies and what happens to it once it gets past our mouths.

I also have to remind myself, almost every day, that not everyone is as passionate about this subject as I am. I too, was once much less concerned, and I have to try to keep that in mind. I sometimes catch myself going on too much about something (like the dangers of soy) and have to tell myself to shut up. Just because you care, doesn't mean they do. But the problem is, I care about them, and I sometimes just can't help myself. But I really don't want to be that person who is always talking about something no one wants to hear about. So for the most part, I keep to myself unless it happens to come up in conversation or someone wants to talk about it.

I don't want my blog to turn into a "food and nutrition blog". I just want to add to what it already is. My blog is a story about my family and our lives. Its a place where I can go to share my thoughts and ideas. A place I can blow off steam or share my passion about a particular subject. I would be absolutely thrilled if some of the information I relay about this could help someone else, but whether it does or not, it is such a huge part of my life now, that it will naturally become a part of my blog as well.

It's not just cooking healthy, but cooking in general that I have really come to love, even more then ever before. I spend so much time in the kitchen now, trying new recipes and experimenting with old ones, that I have more fun with it and have alot more confidence. I have always enjoyed cooking and baking, but now it's with a purpose. I feel what I am doing in the kitchen is having a huge impact on the livelihoods of my family and my daughter's future. I really do feel that what we eat on a daily basis is that important! I can't help but take great pride in that and to feel accomplished when I am done preparing a meal.

“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”
~ Earl Nightingale

I have cut out processed foods, refined sugars and flours, and preservatives. We are eating real, whole foods and I have never felt better in my life. I buy mostly organic, to avoid the toxins from foods sprayed with pesticides, and have recently started buying 100% grassfed beef from a local source. Basically, if it doesn't grow from the ground, come from an animal, or have ingredients in it that are man-made or chemically concocted in a lab, I most likely will not eat it. To some, it might seem extreme (at first), but I know it is making a huge difference in our lives and our health. I see proof of it over and over.

We simply eat more simply. That's the simplest way to put it.

Here is a great overview:
Nutritional Guidelines

I am not, however, a total nazi about it that I will never eat anything with preservatives in it or won't eat at a restaurant. I just do what I can, when I can, and don't worry about it when I can't. I still go out to eat on occassion and have dinner with friends or go to parties and eat whatever is on the spread. I pretty much go with the 80/20 rule. I don't want to have lot of posts similar to this one, I just wanted to put this out there. I know it will turn some people off and that really sucks, because I hope that I won't be judged negatively for it. It's something I have become kind of accustomed to though, it's really strange and I am not really sure why it happens. Just bringing a healthy appetizer to a party, has gotten me some really odd reactions, but there's really not much I can do about it. I am grateful for my amazing, wonderful friends that do share in this same passion, along with the ones that don't and have atleast humored me.

So there you have it. An overview of my journey and how I got to where I am now. I still want my blog to be about me, whatever that may entail, about my family (especially the munchkin) and about whatever I feel like sharing, I don't want it to take a new direction, but I do want to share more about what I have learned and some good recipe concoctions. I hope others will take from it what they will and maybe even be inspired to do some research of their own. I want to be all preachy about what people should or shouldn't be eating. To each his own. I just wanted to give a basic background of where all these new recipes and ideas are coming from and also to explain why I have been so MIA for a while.

Although eating really healthy and following my new guidelines would have eventually gotten me to my weight-loss goals, it doesn't explain how it came off so quickly. My current eating habits will keep my weight from going back up, but I did get some help. In July of last year, my sister told me that she was going to do the Homeopathic HCG diet and gave me a brief overview of what all that entailed. To be honest it didn't sound healthy. I started to research it heavily because I was worried about my sister. The more I read, the more I understood it, and the better it sounded. I did 3 rounds of the diet between July 2010 and January 2011, taking a few months off inbetween around events and holidays. I lost 45 lbs total between the hcg diet and my new eating habits.  Knowing what I know now, however, I would NOT recommend the HCG diet as a healthy way to lose weight.

Happy New Year.... some advice from the teenage version of myself.

I finally finished packing the first room yesterday. I had started with my computer room. I came across a shoe box filled with old zip disks. Not even having a zip drive on my computer at home, I brought the shoe box into work today to see what was on some of them. I came across something I had written when I was in highschool and I thought I would share. It's funny how serious things seemed back then.... how clueless I was as to how much there was to come and how much I would go through before I would even realize myself. I don't remember now what inspired it, but it seemed appropriate for the New Year. And it made me grateful that I held out and took my own advice... (please excuse the typos and grammer, this was written over ten years ago)


Ultimate Happiness

I’m writing this in an attempt to put all of the happiness I’ve felt lately and all of the pain that I’ve rid myself of into words. Anyone that I choose to let read this, is someone that I love and care about and think that they deserve all of the happiness and love that I feel as well.

Let’s start off by asking ourselves a simple question. What do we deserve out of life? So often I look at my friends and those I love and everyone is settling for whatever they can get a hold of, and then looking no further. I myself was willing to settle for what I thought was all I could get out of life, not even realizing the possibilities and what it would feel like to reach what I call “My ultimate Happiness”. It is so hard to find even a good friend, so why do we settle so quickly for a life long mate, when we can go through friends like underwear? Because deep down inside everyone wants to be loved and everyone wants to give love. Once they feel that this is what they are sharing with someone, they feel their search is over. But until you really truly can look around you and realize that love is not just a feeling you share with a boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, but a feeling you can share with every single person you come across on a day to day basis, can we only begin to imagine the possibilities if truly falling in love.

Can you imagine what that would feel like? To stand in that checkout lane at the grocery store and feel love towards the cashier? Of course that sounds silly, but if you love yourself so much and you are so incredibly happy with yourself and the way you are and the way you treat others, loving your checker just comes naturally. Only then can you imagine the love you could really feel and share with another person when you are truly “in love”.

Can you imagine meeting someone that can read your soul? Someone that can tell what your thinking by the way you twitched your nose when you thought of something? And of course you know all of their hopes and dreams and wish with everything that you have that they all come true for them simply because they have become apart of you, and their hopes and dreams are now yours as well, just like yours have becomes theirs. You know all of this about each other because you take every spare minute you have to learn as much about them as you possibly can because they fascinate you this much. You no longer have your own seperate little world, where so many of your thoughts and aspirations that you think on a daily basis go unheard and unsaid. You’ll have someone right there wanting to know, dying to know, what it is your thinking and hoping you’ll share.

This person will be someone who you can wake up in the morning next to everyday for the rest of your life, turn over towards them and look into their face with no regrets. You can look into their eyes and truly know you couldn’t possibly be any happier than this person has made you. Do you feel that kind of love with the person you are with now? Maybe you don’t think you deserve that kind of love. Maybe you’re just too scared. Scared of losing what you have and risking it all to find your own “Ultimate happiness”. That is where I think people lack love for themselves. If you are only settling for that common love that any human being can feel towards another, a love you can feel towards your dog as well, then you are only depriving yourself of all the happiness in the world.

Have you ever heard the saying about marriages with best friends work out the best? Well, if you have found someone who meets all the expectations of a “best friend” and who on top of that can share your most intimate moments with, then my friend, you have found someone worth holding on to! If the thought of calling this person names out of anger, or them doing the same to you, makes you want to cry, then there is someone you can consider your kindred spirit. It’s not about money, it’s not about your social status in society, or even about convenience. Never give up the rest of your life to someone because it’s convenient. It’s not fair to either person.

Everyone hears about all of the wonderful things they can feel when they are in love, but so little people believe in them and think that that kind of love is out there for them. It hurts me so much to see my friends in relationships where they are constantly getting hurt and hurting someone back as well. These are people that I love and care about and think that they deserve the same kind of love that I do. I can understand why they settle for this, because I almost settled for it too. How can you know there’s so much better out there for you when you haven’t seen it or touched it? Does the idea of being alone scare you so much, that it’s easier to compromise a little of your happiness to not have to be alone. My suggestion to all of those that feel this way is to step outside if your relationship and truly try to look at it from a outsiders point of view. Pretend you are your mother or father who always wants the best for you, and thinks you deserve only that. Do you know deep down in your heart that there is no one else who could make you any happier and that you could love anymore. Whenever you dreamed of falling in love and meeting that special someone that you would spend the rest of your life with, does the person you are with now meet all of those expectations?

If they don’t, maybe you can be content with what you have anyway. and if so you need not read any further. But if not, if you think you deserve better, you need to make up your mind to find better. And you need to start with loving yourself a lot more. I don’t mean to become conceited and think you are better than everyone, but you need to realize what you are worth and then you will get what you deserve. Try to talk to someone everyday, someone that you’ve never talked to before, learn things from others. Sometimes the best advice can be found in the most unexpected places. You’ll begin to feel better already, I promise. Suround yourself by your friends and people who truly love you and care about you, they will help you see what a wonderful person you are and help you realize that there is someone out there who can help you feel like this everyday for the rest of your life.

This isn’t meant to sound like advice for people who are depressed and hate themselves and their lives. But you’d be so surprised if you heard all of the conversations I’ve had lately with so many people, and how many of them do not even realize their own self worth. These are usually the ones who have settled for just a taste of happiness. Most people probably go their whole lives without ever really feeling true love. Some may say what they don’t know might hurt them. But I think that what they can learn can set them free. Who should be more responsible for your own happiness other than yourself? No one. No one can make you happier than you can. You are the one who chooses who you surround yourself with on a day to day basis. If you constantly keep going back to those who do not truly appreciate you and know how important you are and what a neat person you are, than of course you are not going to realize what you may truly mean to someone else and what you should mean to yourself! If you are a truly happy person and truly feel ultimate happiness with someone else than you have accomplished so much more than those who don’t even take the time to realize it’s out there.

Happiness is realizing that nothing is too important. ~ Antonio Gala

Me and Joe have been talking alot lately about what we would do if one of us lost our job. Things have been so slow for Joe at work, and there is always the possibility that things could change for him there. We keep trying to prepare ourselves of this very real possibility and what we would do if it happened. We have both been very worried about it lately, especially with the baby coming.

It seems like everyone I know is going through a hard time right now in some way. People are losing their jobs and their homes right and left. People are scared and they don't know what they are going to do.

But over the last couple weeks, our perspective has changed. We decided that no matter what happens, we'll figure it out and we'll get through it as a family. Just like we will help the rest of our family if anyone needs it. We all joke that if it came down to it, we would all have to live together in one house. But if that really happened, and that was the worst case situation, would it really truly be that bad? I think about families in other 3rd world countries where they all (kids, parents, cousins & gradparents) live in a hut with a dirt floor and have no idea how they are going to find the next meal for their children. Then I feel guilty for feeling so sorry for myself. If we truly put ourselves in our worst case scenarios with what is going on, could it really be that bad? We will all have each other to lean on and get through this and together, as a family, we will make it through.

Our family is bonded by our strong love and support for one another. We may all have different ways of showing it, but in the end, we all feel the same and we all love each other very much. When I really let myself see past all of the material things and what we really do not need anyway, I swell up with emotion when I truly realize how lucky I am to have everything that I do. I have a wonderful husband, the best parents and sisters, and some of the most amazing and caring friends.

My family:


Me and My Hubby: