What is Your Diet Doing for You?

As I’ve been working on getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight, I think about what I put into my mouth even more than usual. On top of that, my husband and I recently saw two inspiring and motivating food documentaries.

One evening we watched Forks Over Knives and we got inspired to eat a more plant based diet. We have known the benefits of a plant based diet and in the past even tried to eat vegetarian meals 2-3 times per week. However, this movie really emphasizes the negative health consequences of the typical American diet. I went to bed after we watched it and at 2AM my husband was waking me up as he came to bed talking about how we should become vegans. I’m like that is great, but it is 2AM and I am asleep.

A few weeks later I awoke to find that my husband had purchased an expensive juicer, which I found annoying. He said you need to watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. A few days later I watched the movie and I had to admit I could see why he bought the juicer. The changes made by the people in the movie were very inspiring. An unexpected bonus was that the juicer has been great for getting our daughter to eat more green vegetables. She loves a kale, banana, and pineapple smoothie.

Then, I came across Eat to Live and Disease Proof Your Child both by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Once again I was wowed by considering the power of the diet. He talks of patients getting rid of diabetes by drastically changing to a nutritarian diet.

The idea that our diet can make us healthy or make us sick isn’t new, but it is often lost sight of in our society. We tend to look to doctors to make us well, when perhaps our daily choices of food, exercise, and sleep have the most potential to improve our long-term health. These movies and books reminded me that the food choices aren’t just about getting to our goal weight, but they are about making our bodies strong and healthy and protecting them from the chronic diseases plaguing our society.

These movies and books explain the benefits of a healthy diet in more detail than I can. If you know you need to make a change in your life take some time to learn why. Raising your awareness of why something is a healthy change means that you are more likely to stick with it.

At our house we are eating more fruits (3-4 per day), vegetables (especially leafy greens), beans, and less processed foods. We are eating much less meat and dairy products. We do stray, especially when we are out, but when we are home we work to stick to healthy foods that are full of nutrients. Our diet is a work in progress, but as a family we want a diet that helps fight disease, a diet that improves our mood, a diet that strengthens our immune system, and we want a diet that teaches our daughters how to eat healthy for a lifetime.