Our Health Journey

We try our hardest to eat the best we know how to.  We are extremely passionate about what we have learned concerning what is good and not good for our bodies and health and desire to impart that wisdom to others.  Our motivations are not to judge, condemn or push but rather to extend the grace that has been given to us in learning the importance of taking care of ourselves as a whole.  The blessings that come from being intentional about our health are endless and what we have experienced so far are some of these: feeling good, more alive, well rested, sharper minds, no bacterial illness only viral when we are sick, less doctors visits, better long term health and wisdom to pass on to our children.  Of course, it is costly so we do our very best and give ourselves grace when it's not financially/socially doable for a certain time/season.

Back in 2008 our healthy journey began. We had heard from a friend about a book called "The Makers Diet" by Jordin Rubin.  We read that and did a total makeover in how we perceived food, bought, ate and prepared food and became overall more intentional about our health.  We completely overhauled our refrigerator and pantry and made our first trips to Trader Joes and Whole Foods.  The cost of that trip was $600 because we lived 1 1/2 hrs away from there and we were shopping for the entire month and totally restocking our pantry and fridge with no pre-packaged or processed foods (sea salt, almonds, honey, condiments, spices, etc).  

During that first month we also purchased probiotics (that would help our guts get healthy and give us good bacteria that we miss because of the lack of quality food and amount of quality food we consume.)  We also purchased the cleansing system and a multi-vitamin that would aid in giving us those vitamins we were lacking in our food.  We were intentional to only go with the vegetable casing and the healthier supplements.  As we continued our journey of eating and living more intentionally healthy we came across Doug Kauffman and saw even more benefits to this lifestyle.  Living in Southern Illinois at the time it was very difficult to implement this lifestyle fully because the health food stores were so far away.  We did utilize the farmers market in the summer and were thankful when the local grocery store began carrying more clean, organic items we were eating.  We were also able to purchase a half of grass-fed long horn beef which was a huge blessing!   Had we stayed longer we would have grown our own garden and lived more sustainably. 

Moving to Cleveland we were delighted to know that we were only 5 minutes from Whole Foods and 15 minutes from Trader Joes and that all of our local grocery stores carried more of our foods!!  This would make this important part of our lives a little easier especially with a newborn!  

With two children and one on the way it was important for us to be as intentional and even more intentional (as now we would get to teach our kids to eat this way too and to eventually teach them how to prepare these foods).  

Thankfully, more resources are available at our fingertips and it has made it even that much more doable with a family.  

Since this is such a large part of who we are and what we are passionate about you will see many posts about healthy living. 

Today, I leave you with being intentional about teaching this to our kids.  Nataleigh is frequently in the kitchen with me, learning not just how to measure and mix but about the ingredients she's putting into what we are making.  

These are gluten free and grain free blueberry muffins.  We use Raw unsalted Almond Butter from Trader Joes as the nut butter. (Peanut butter is a no and here is a great article explaining why: http://www.knowthecause.com/index.php/contributor-blog/39-michael-smith/1541-peanut-butter-vs-nut-butters) Here's the recipe:
Click here for recipe