In the coming months, my goal is to slowly share with you our journey to Living Healthy on Our Budget! One of the key things I have learned about changing your lifestyle is that it needs to take place with small steps in order for it to stick around. If I came in and cleared our cabinets of processed food, artificial colors and flavors, and then replaced it with all natural and organic products, our cubbards would be bare! I have learned that in order to change our lifestyle, I need to have patience and take it a little each day. I can’t afford to just all the sudden replace everything with organic. But, more importantly, I want to know why I am replacing every item for my family.
Educate Yourself
One of my reasons for breaking this down into smaller bites is to let you see that every time you make a change you need to know why. There is no way I could educate myself properly, if we changed everything all at once. By moving slowly and picking the things that are easy first, I am able to be more educated and determine the changes that will work best for my family. I don’t think it will make sense for my family to ever go fully organic or all natural, however I hope someday if it fits our lifestyle, we can do it. By taking it slowly, there is a higher chance of that happening.
Our Move to Whole Grains
With all that to say, the first place I began to focus on a few years ago was to slowly move us to whole grains. I grew up eating whole grain breads, so that was easy, we were already doing it. So next I started replacing our enriched white pasta, with more whole grain options. At first my husband really didn’t like the whole grain pasta, and we were eating more pasta on a regular basis at that time. To make the transition easier, I starting doing half white and half wheat and that seemed to work better. I still serve some white enriched pastas, but my goal is to stick with the whole grain options.
The next place I started introducing whole grains was in my baking recipes; like pancakes, waffles, muffins and homemade pizza crust. Later in the series we will even talk about using fresh milled grain, buying grains in bulk and using a grain mill! I will be learning more about that this week , and I am so excited to get educated on it and share with you what I find out.
So, have you made the move to whole grains? Why or why not? Or, what was your first healthy living move? Leave us a comment and tell us about your experiences.
Up next in the Healthy Living on a Budget Series…Must Reads on Healthy Living.
Hi Kelley,
You hit a nerve. A good one! I just started milling my own flour and can not believe the difference fresh flour makes over store bought. I would be happy to share some flour with you. I know you don’t know me, but we have mutual friends who can vouch for me. You probably know others with a mill as well, but I thought I would offer. Looking forward to what you learn.
alicia
Alicia – I am so glad, that is what I am hoping to do, in a good way! I really appreciate your offer, however I actually have someone coming over this week to do that very thing and I can’t wait to share it with everyone. I would love to hear your insights once I get my post up about it too. Thanks so much for the offer!
We eat whole grain bread and my kids eat white wheat. We only eat whole grain pasta and brown rice. I made this switch a while ago. Nobody at my house has seemed to notice. I try to incorporate whole wheat flour into my baking as much as possible.
Thanks for doing this series … I still have a lot of work to do to get us on a solid healthy eating plan.
.-= Susan´s last blog ..Big Boy Bed =-.
I’m glad that we aren’t the only ones who are trying to eat more whole grains!!! 🙂 We have been eating whole grains off and on for whole lives, and we notice that when we eat them we feel amazing! A few weeks ago we decided to make eating whole grains something we do daily. We already feel better! 🙂
I completely agree!