Semi-Whole Food Diet…Stalled

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(Since I spent much of February on the sofa recovering from surgery and didn’t do much by way of frugal living, I don’t have a Ways I Saved post for you this month.)

 

2014 into 2015 seemed to be the year of survival. Debt payoff stalled, life stalled, even our attempt to eat a more natural diet stalled. We spent so much of our time and energy just trying to get by than anything extra seemed like a monumental undertaking.

We haven’t kept up with our semi-whole foods diet. With Abby’s health issues, she has to be on a constipating diet. That means a lot of refined foods instead of more natural foods like we normally eat. I try to feed us differently than her but sometimes it is just plain easier to make one meal for us all. As Abby is getting better, I am looking forward to getting back to a better diet. We have kept up with some of the things we had been doing, just with more processed food added back in to our diet. Here is what we have still been doing.

Using raw sugar or maple syrup- I still use raw sugar in my baking (I do use conventional brown and powdered sugars) and maple syrup in my cooking. Maple syrup makes the best sweetener for iced tea and in my teriyaki sauce.

Mixing our own yogurt- Minus the weeks I was on “sofa rest,” I still buy plain yogurt and add our own frozen fruit and maple syrup to make yogurt for Matt and for Abby. Abby typically gets organic whole milk yogurt and only the maple syrup, no fruit, because of her current diet. The whole milk gives her extra protein.

Buying organic bread- Abby is eating typical white bread but Matt and I are still eating organic oat nut bread.

Making most things from scratch- I still make most of our stuff from scratch. Matt’s morning blueberry muffins are half all-purpose flour, half whole wheat. Abby’s banana/applesauce muffins are half all purpose, half rice flour. Both are a little healthier than all all-purpose flour.

 

Not much but it’s still something. This year I have a goal of feeding us more vegetables and fruit. We do okay with that but not super awesome. I’d like to add in more produce. Not necessarily organic, just more. I’d also like to cut back on the dairy some, mainly because dairy is expensive. We eat a lot of cheese. Cutting back would allow me to buy more produce.

Another thing I’d like to do is be better at making my own convenience and snack foods. We still buy some packaged foods, especially in the summer when we need snacks at competition. We don’t do it much outside of that but I’d still like to replace some of those preservative-laden foods with healthier options. We’ve pretty good at eating healthy at home, it’s out and about we struggle with. I’m hoping that with my next check-in, we will be doing better on this journey. 🙂