Clean eating?

Last week, my sweet husband signed us up for an exciting evening of touring the local grocery store with our Chiropractor. As a modern woman who would love to be very healthy and, of course, look like my 25 year old self, I agreed to go and see if I could learn something new. (Disclaimer here - I've wanted to be healthy and look like my younger self for a while now. I've been reading avidly about this for YEARS!)
A few years ago, I read Wheatbelly and it changed my life! I gave up my gluten laden favorites and started feeling way better. Also, I am sure that I felt better because I dropped about 20 pounds in six months! At the end of that six months, sweet husband was told by his doctor that he needed to try to go vegan so I read some more books. I especially enjoyed It Starts with Food that my general practitioner recommended. The book suggested a lot of things that made sense and like Wheatbelly, I could really buy into the science of it all. Hubby, in his vegan quest, recommended Forks over Knives, which I read and tried to implement for him. Our food bill increased, I got frustrated fixing three separate meals most nights and some of our improvements were dismissed quickly, while others just eventually didn't happen any more.
Over the last few months, life around here has changed drastically. There are only three of us to eat at home together and we spent most of January and February eating out. I have been slack about eating gluten, Hubby has been making less than great decisions about his own food and Baby Girl keeps complaining that there is no food in the house. So, we have arrived at Thursday and our trip to the grocery store with Dr. Joe.
We met in front of the in store Starbucks and I was pretty happy that Dr. Joe didn't comment on my venti hot chocolate. The initial things we talked about where things that I was familiar with - stick to the perimeter, fresh not processed. Moving to the produce section, I was pleased to already know some things, but it was great to learn about different lettuces. It's one thing to read, "Eat darker, more colorful greens." It's way more helpful to learn what the different things taste like, how to prepare them, what you can use them to replace and how to select these "weird" veggies! As we headed to the "Organic/Special Diet/Pricey" section, I had already created a great list of things that we could easily add to our menus!
In the "Health Foods" section, as Kroger calls it, we discussed milk, yogurt, butter and kombucha. I liked learning about different benefits of all the types of milk, but I decided that I'm sticking with my Mayfield. I just won't mention that to Dr. Joe. There was a group of us shopping together. The other women were not as well read as I am about this healthy eating, but they both knew and loved this drink that Dr. Joe was praising. I've heard of kombucha, but only in jokes or comments making fun of foo-foo people. Hubby and I were very willing to try this beverage that everyone was raving about so we picked two bottles from the flavors that were suggested.
The group cruised the perimeter of the store for almost two hours. There were lots of little lessons that Hubby and I took away from the trip. Turns out, we are eating the "good cheeses" more than we're eating the not so good ones, most of the processed stuff that we eat is stuff that we won't miss too much, and most importantly just because it's not "good" doesn't mean it's "BAD"! This is really good because I'm pretty sure I won't be giving up Coke and Chocolate and Hubby won't be cutting out his Diet Dr. Pepper or tuna sandwiches!
After we finished, we were happy with the things we had learned and had some conversation about which changes we'd be implementing first. Since we are both such fans of our carbonated beverages, we decided to share our kombucha drink to start down the path of healthier hydration. Kombucha is disgusting! The stuff we bought had chia seeds in it. The liquid tasted like sweetened vinegar with tadpoles in it. (No, I do not actually know what tadpoles taste like, but I have a GREAT imagination!)
My personal take away from the night was kind of like I had read another fantastic book. I know more than I did. I absolutely know what I need to do to feel better, lose weight and be healthier. I also know what changes I can make initially! I hit the grocery store this weekend and made sure that the fridge is stocked with high quality meat, healthy veggies and no more processed foods. We did NOT purchase any tadpole juice! Maybe some day we will decide that we can try a different flavor. In the meantime, I am going to be making changes for the entire family. Hopefully, we'll start feeling and looking better really fast.