"How do you do it?"

I get this question quite a few times a week sometimes several times a day.

The question is always in response to me posting to Facebook or talking to someone about how I have given up processed foods.

When I started this journey to get healthy as many of you know I was morbidly obese. The doctor told me to change or die. Now not in so many words did he say that, but the implications were the same.

Honestly it was not an easy task. Ramen Noodles always had a presence in my pantry since they occupied the bottom dresser drawer in college. I even know people whom feed these easy go to noodles to their children. The sodium content alone in boxed and processed food is astonishing.

I started changing our lifestyle with food. Food is the center of just about every culture in the world. So changing what you eat is a hard step. I started with this first because it really does not matter how many miles you run or how often you exercise if you are not properly feeding your body than you are asking it to do the impossible. There is an old computer programers adage that says "Garbage In Garbage Out". As with computers so are our bodies.

Changing your eating habits is not an easy task. We are ingrained as adults to eat how we were raised. If you were raised eating what many celebrity chefs call convenience foods, these are the just add x,y and z and cook, than you are more likely to eat that way as an adult. This also goes for healthy eaters.

The biggest problem with convenience foods is that they are loaded with all kinds of artificials, flavor, color, chemically changed items, preservatives, and many things this chick can not pronounce.

There are several rules to eating healthy. For the next several weeks I will be posting these on our new feature "Healthy Monday's"

So you do not have to wait that long my faithful friends and readers, classmates and running buddies (who know all this already because I learned some of it from you) I'm going to give you a taste of how to change your diet today.

The first rule of healthy is as follows: If you can not pronounce it you should not eat it, if you need a dictionary to define the word then you should not put it in your mouth.

Now for an admission. There are a handful of staples that I buy that are classified convenience foods but in this case I try to find a version of that product that is "organic" or "kosher" or "vegan" We will explore these labels in another post. I choose these types of products because they are more likely to have all natural. not chemically boosted or changed ingredients in them.

In a perfect world we would all have the time to make our own bread and pasta and grow gardens and can all our own veggies to use. That is what is so great about choosing to change the food you put in your body. In today's markets you have a choice. You are not saddled with one brand of noodles or bread or pasta. You might find that at first is may be slightly more expensive, but in the long run it will be worth it. I have started to offset that cost in several ways, looking for buy one get one deals, and shopping with local produce growers and my local independent dairy Gammon Family Dairy, Inc.

As you begin making changes be sure that you do so in small steps. I started out by choosing frozen veggies instead of canned. There is a HUGE reduction of salt in just this on small change. You have to be willing to look at the labels. Read what is in your food. The fewer ingredients the better for you.

How do you get motivated to change?

Why here at DOAFCR we are going to help motivate you to change. Your challenge should you choose to accept it is as follows.

Challenge 1:

Stop buying canned veggies and start buying fresh or frozen veggies.

Small steps lead to big changes.

If you decide to accept this challenge please leave us a message we would love to know that you did.

FCR