All done

Yesterday ended our “whole food challenge” formally.  I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies (with white flour) last night as a celebration for everyone.  This week went much more smoothly than last week, but we did “cheat” a little bit.  Anything I baked I used a mixture of white and whole wheat flour.  I was getting a lot of flack for the whole wheat around here, and decided that some whole wheat is better than no whole wheat. 

I also bought organic potato chips.  Truthfully, they have the same ingredients as Lays potato chips, but they felt better to buy because they were in the organic section.  Also, that simple fact has significantly reduced the speed of consumption.  Apparently, you have to want chips pretty bad to eat organic chips! 

The biggest news of the week was the addition of the ice cream maker.  After my last post where I painted a picture that was all hunky-dory, we had a whole-food meltdown (I had the meltdown), because I was tired of the complaining.  The solution?  Buy an ice cream maker!  We have been making our own, preservative-free,ice cream all week long, at a fraction of the price that we would have bought ice cream from Schwan’s, and this stuff is oh, so delicious!  This had everyone feeling better around the house this week!

The kids have been great this week, great behavior, good moods, etc.  Cameron and Lilly actually played together ALL EVENING last night and didn’t fight once.  This is huge! 

I have been talking with everyone about what changes do they feel we can permanently implement, and what changes have to go.  The only things they would “like” to get rid of were:  Brown rice (probably not going to happen), whole-wheat pancakes (maybe…), and Ed needs to have some type of flavored beverage, preferably caffeinated.  He is not a coffee drinker, so we are trying to figure out would be a good option that would provide flavor and caffeine. 

The bulk of the challenge fell on my shoulders.  I had to plan every meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), I had to buy the groceries, and prepare the food (most meals).  I guess the biggest question is can I continue to implement these changes?  With the positive changes I have seen over these past two weeks, I am going to do my best to stick with it.  I plan to completely eliminate all food dyes and high fructose corn syrup.  That much is for sure.  I also plan to buy more fruit, no chips (or few chips), and will only bake one batch of cookies per week.  I plan to buy only whole-wheat/whole grain bread.  The bakery here in Cold Spring makes a white/whole wheat mix that Ed can eat (he has resisted the whole wheat bread the most).  I also began buying milk and butter from the co-op country store here in Cold Spring.  It is from a local dairy.  The cost is the same (a nickel more for the milk), but the quality is out of this world…that butter is the most delicious butter I have ever eaten.

Even though we are “done”, we really aren’t done.  We will keep trucking and moving towards better health.  We might slip up every now and then, but this has been very eye opening for us.  And as time moved on, it truly did get much easier to adopt this lifestyle!  Thanks to all of you for your support, it really helped keep me on track