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One of the surprising things about starting to make healthier food choices is that it gets easier. Your tastes start to change and your body starts craving real food. In this guest post, Lisa shares her experience with becoming a healthy eater.
There was a version of me… not too long ago… that ate everything. Absolutely everything. Oh, how I loved food… and those days when junk food seemed to have no adverse affect on my health or weight.
One day, in an effort to shed my unwanted pregnancy pounds, I decided to become a vegetarian. Â I stopped eating meat about three years ago, after my son was born, and allowed myself to have one “cheat food” – pepperoni pizza. Oh, that pepperoni pizza! I let myself eat it whenever I wanted. I ate it pretty much on a weekly basis, but slowly I didn’t have a desire to eat pepperoni pizza as much, and my intake decreased. My tastes were changing, and I was ok with that.
But, it was the day I decided to try “natural’ peanut butter that truly changed my life. Well, it wasn’t the day I tried it, so much as the next time I had “regular” peanut butter. I tasted things in that regular peanut butter that I have never tasted before. It tasted like chemicals, not food. I couldn’t believe I had eaten regular peanut butter for so long without ever noticing.
Since then, I’ve been making more of an attempt to eat more real foods. You know – the foods that nature created for us to eat. Real fruits, real veggies, real beans, real grains. I started eating things that came from a tree instead of a box.
But I didn’t realize what I was doing to myself. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, I was un-poisioning myself. I was teaching my body what real food tasted like. And, I started to become a quite picky eater. The things I used to love started to taste less and less like food. There was a growing list of foods I could barely force myself to eat.
- Those pre-packaged rice sides became inedible – they tasted like I had poured a packet of dirt over some rice.
- Ramen noodles went from bad to worse.
- Boxed macaroni & cheese? I can’t believe my body used to process this stuff as food.
- Pizza rolls? Oh, they still sound yummy… but they taste nothing like pizza, sauce, cheese, or anything. I don’t know what these are supposed to taste like, but it sure ain’t pizza.
- Lays potato chips? They taste like they’ve been sprayed with Windex. A LOT of Windex.
Everything tastes like processed junk, and I have no choice but to learn how to make my own food from scratch. I had never imagined I’d turn into this quasi natural food advocate, but It’s certainly something I am fully embracing. But, I still have my “cheat foods” – Doritos, Diet Coke, and others. I will stop eating whenever I decide to. Or whenever they start tasting like crap. Whichever comes first.
What about you? As you get older, do you find your food choices changing? Is your body speaking to you about what you are putting in it?
Lisa Brown is the proud mother of a 3-year-old Phoenix and 9-month-old Ariana. In addition to being a vegetarian, she’s also a stay-at-home-mom, breastfeeding advocate, cloth-diaper lover, and a loving wife. She spends her little bit of free time blogging at It Keeps Getting Better. We first published a version of this post in 2012, but we wanted to share it with you again.
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Stanford Blutch says
The quality of the food we eat is becoming bigger problem with each day, and at the same time we throw away tons of it. There is something really messed up in our food policy.
Gina says
I used to think the organic food craze was a bunch of hippie hocus pocus. But as I started to do the research, I began to look at things in a different light. Then I started changing eating habits. My church started eating healthier, then eventually my parents did, too. So that helped out a lot.
I still like Peanut M&Ms, though. But I drink more water now than I did before.
Lydia says
Its a post that makes me in deep thinking that how much i don’t care of myself while eating. I never give attention about it. I did ate whatever is in my mood at that time.. Never think either its useful for my health or not. Thanks for sharing an excellent post
Jee says
Love to read your story lisa.. Thanks for share this.
Kia says
This inspired me to write my own post which will be on my blog in a few days.
It’s so shocking what goes into processed foods, and how once you get used to how real food tastes all the processed stuff just doesn’t taste that great anymore.
Susan (5 Minutes for Mom) says
I’m always on a journey to better eating… these days I’m trying to eat lots more REAL food.
Angela says
I have noticed that when I focus on heating healthy and am working out that when I reach for a cookie or a chip, that it just makes me feel gross. I think your body really does adapt to a way of eating (good and bad) and it doesn’t react well to change.
Get Free Stuff and Hot Deals says
It really takes a lifestyle change. It is hard but we try to change lil by lil and we are gradually getting to the goal of healthy eating. You just feel so different when eating healthier foods. I know our immune systems are so much stronger because we rarely ever get sick.
Corrina says
I have started noticing the processed, chemically flavored stuff more too as I try to eat healthier. I’m still a work in progress, but getting there!
Tina Schneider says
I am Lisa’s older sister, and I can attest to the fact that she used to eat the ingredients for smores (mostly the chocolate and peanut butter) on a regular basis after school. I recall she also enjoyed putting barbeque sauce on vegetables or anything else that was “healthy” that she did not seem to appease her taste buds. Oh, and what about the double chocolate dognuts, cheese burgers, and western omelets you split with Dad? Lisa, you have surely come a long way, and I can hardly believe, but know it is true, that you continue to be a picky, but now a healthier eater.
Amy says
We used to drink a ton of Coffeemate fat-free French Vanilla creamer. I mean a ton. We were going through several quarts a week. I found a recipe on Pinterest for the same sort of thing that was just sweetened condensed milk, regular milk, and vanilla. Now I can’t drink the Coffeemate stuff because it tastes like chemicals to me. I can’t get my husband to switch, though, so we’re still buying a lot of it, but fortunately it’s only half as much.