My Story: A Journey from Toll House Cookie Mom to Veggie Mama

I still do a double take when people call me “healthy.” I never once thought “When I grow up I want to write blog posts on eating more veggies and buying local beef.”  (As if blogs were around then, but you know what I mean.)  When my husband and I first got married our meals consisted of Hamburger Helper, Chicken Helper, grilled burgers and chicken, and Jack’s Naturally Rising Crust Pizza.  We ate that for four years.  I didn’t have a lot of culinary skills, and I was working full time. My health was not great.  I easily got strep throat and developed pneumonia once on the back side of an infection.   My cholesterol was high (around 270), and I was diagnosed with IBS.  The doctor said that I was too young to begin meds, being on them that early in my life would cause liver problems later.  He said that I needed to adjust my diet and exercise.  I interpreted that to mean “low fat” or “low cal” whenever possible.  It did not help a bit.

Upon the arrival of our first baby I quit my job.  I began cooking a lot more, but we had very little money.  “Low cost” trumped “highly nutritious” every time.  My mom got me a magazine subscription to Simple and Delicious, and I began to develop my confidence and skills in the kitchen to go beyond “open package and dump in cookware.”  I paid attention to my baby’s nutrition and kept him on homemade pureed baby food for a LONG time. This insured he ate enough fruits and veggies since there were few on our table.   Baby two came along.  She was a fussy baby, and my husband was working crazy hours.  I began baking as therapy.  Cookies, bars, cakes and pastries, I was well on my way to becoming the mom I had dreamed of: the soccer mom with the best treats!  My husband would joke, “If you keep sending me to work with brownies each night I work late they are going to continue to give me big projects!” 

Fast forward a couple years, and I was expecting my third baby.  My oldest was still very inconsistent potty training even though he was 3 1/2. Then he began experiencing painful bowel obstructions. The doctor suggested a stool softener to keep him regular.  I wasn’t comfortable with that at all.  We tried to up his fiber.  I threw ground flax seed in everything and forced down prune juice every morning.  Sometimes it seemed to help; sometimes it didn’t.  We would then give him the stool softener to get things started up again.

Upon the arrival of baby three we introduced a new twist-a dairy intolerance.  I was an exhausted nursing mom who had to eliminate an entire food group.  Dairy free baked goods didn’t taste the same at all.  I turned to easy dairy free foods.  Oreos, Wheat Thins and Jolly Time microwave kettle corn were daily snacks in our diets.  Unfortunately for us easy diary-free food equaled highly processed. 

2009 was our sickest year ever.  Ear infections, strep throat, H1N1, pneumonia...all of a sudden we were regulars at the doctor.  As my oldest son’s bowl issues got worse I decided to try a new doctor.  The doctor said we had two choices.  1) We could go with the first doctor’s suggestion and put him on a stool softener every day.  Or 2) we could eliminate processed foods from his diet.  Just adding fiber wasn’t going to cut it unless we got rid of the junk we were feeding him.  He suggested that we read Jordan Rubin’s book The Maker’s Diet. 

The book hit me like a freight train.  It sent me on a quest not only to learn a whole new way to eat, but also to consider what our bodies were being exposed to and absorbing.  It was overwhelming, but I was hooked.  A paradigm shift began to take place as I read stacks of books. I had to learn a whole new lingo, new recipes and a new line of thought.  It has been a lot of work. 

I have failed a lot, and I am still learning a lot.   On the flip side our family has not been on antibiotics since the fall of 2009, and my cholesterol is down to the normal level.  My oldest son’s bowl issues have cleared up on a daily basis, but he still has set backs.  Most of the time I can trace is back to issues in his diet. 

I miss those days of baking.  To be honest maybe it is not so much the baking (I spend plenty of time in the kitchen), but people’s reaction to baked goods.  You get a much different reaction to bringing Green Beans Almandine to Thanksgiving than if you are the person bringing the Puff Pillow Pastries.  I am not sad about our change from all white sugar and white flour; I am very thankful.  It didn’t work when God tried to get my attention with my own health issues.  He used my children to show me a different way.  We are healthier now, and that makes me happy!

This post was linked up at  http://homesteadrevival.blogspot.com/ and http://www.pennilessparenting.com/ and http://wearethatfamily.com and http://quickeasycheaphealthy.com/ and http://frugallysustainable.com/