Update on Homemade Laundry Soap

Well, I have gone through my first bottle of the Homemade Laundry soap! So far so good, it seems to do just as good as any store bought laundry soap, clothes seem clean and smell good. The best part is I have not spent any money on laundry soap sense October 2009. Wahoooo! When you make it, it does make a ton, so you will not have to make more for easily 6 months or more. If you choose to take this on you need to make sure that you have plenty of old laundry soap bottles to store it in. I also used large plastic kitty litter containers as temporary holding containers. I have not experimented yet, but I would guess if you want a fragrance to your laundry soap you could always add essential oils to it, but I am not sure! I will have to check into.

Homemade Laundry Soap

Well just made my first batch of homemade laundry soap! It was fun, didn't take too long, the ingredients are Fels Naptha bar soap, borax and washing soda! Pretty easy to do, it has to sit overnight now and then tomorrow I will be able to put it into containers. I will let you know how it works. If anyone wants the recipe let me know by leaving a comment and I will post the recipe for you. Just my way of making one more step to being purchasing less processed products conserving money. I will keep you updated as to the progress of the laundry soap.

My view processed foods

Have you ever tried to not buy processed foods? WOW! It is not always the easiest thing to do. We are trying to do a no or low processed food lifestyle, for low processed food we mean trying to keep the ingredient list to 5 ingredients or less and all of the ingredients have to be recognizable, as Michael Pollan says, even by your grandmother. I think it is totally doable, it will just take a little work on my part. But isn't a little work worth a few more extra years on your life. It takes a little time to remember what products are good to buy and yes, sometimes they do cost a little bit more, but you can either pay the extra in the food that is good for you or you can pay it later in health care dollars! Take your pick! I choose to put my money toward the food, because I know the good wholesome food can't hurt me. Once you start learning to adopt this better lifestyle it just becomes a way of life and trust me you really don't miss the old way. I had a friend ask me "don't you have cravings", I said "no", I can't remember the last time I actually had a craving especially for something sweet. When you reduce or eliminate things from your eating lifestyle your body will adapt to it and it is amazing how when you try to eat it many months down the road you really don't care for the taste or you can only eat just a very tiny amount. I usually cannot eat any kind of dessert by myself, I have become accustom to not eating much with sugar in it, so when it comes to desserts, I usually just take a bite of my husbands and that is more than enough for me. This is a huge difference for me, those of you who know me, know that before I started eating healthy I used to eat chocolate all the time, had to have, craved it. Ate dessert all the time and had my own dessert, never shared!

Also, by reducing the amount of processed foods that you buy, it will help you buy more local products, because they are usually whole foods made with nothing but natural ingredients and few ingredients. Supporting our local producers is what we should be doing more than Big Business, who does not have our health and best interest at heart. I am amazed at the type of ingredients that they put in our food and expect us to consume everyday, and I am amazed that since our government is overseeing this production that they even allow it. But I guess when you have someone at your door step waving thousands of dollars at you at a time you will do just about anything, no matter the cost to anyone. NOT ME! Our food is killing us, literally! If you think about the number of chemicals and pesticides that are put onto our foods everyday, and the preservatives that they use just to get our food to us, that should speak volumes to us. Buy local, it doesn't require food to be sprayed with stuff for us to get it and it to be good. I have done a lot of reading over the years and I do believe that the pesticides and preservative that are used on our foods are contributing to our health conditions. Don't ask big business such as the food producers or the government, because they will tell you it is perfectly safe and that the FDA oversees all of it, but it is not in their best interest to tell you it is not good for the body, remember they have a monetary stake in this! Just think about trying to incorporate one thing a month that is not processed into your diet, add something new each month and then eventually you will have developed the habit of eating healthier and feeling better and reducing the money paid out in health care dollars and keep that in your pocket to buy the better foods or do something special for yourself. Just give it a try with small steps it can be accomplished. Good Luck! Send me comments on how you are doing, I would love to hear.

Our Garden

We put a garden in this year! It has been fun and crazy! I need to work on the timing of everything next year, we first had radishes come in but nothing else, the the lettuce came, but nothing else. Then gradually everything else started coming in! Now I have freaking cucumbers coming out my ears! Might need to do less cucumber plants next year, we did 4 this year!!! Tomatoes are slow to turn red, have a ton of green tomatoes but they are coming on one or two at a time. We have been trying to create meals based on what is coming ripe in the garden, sometimes not always so easy! We have done a fantastic job at keeping the garden completely organic and use only rainwater to water, unless we are experiencing a draught; which I believe we only had to use the city water once to water. Well I will keep you updated as to what we are doing with the garden.

I am back!

Sorry, I took a minor detour for a while! I promise to start updating my blog more often. I have been doing some gardening, reading and biking!

The Best Chicken Sandwich

3 oz Chicken Breast
Red Onion
Blue Cheese
Whole Wheat Bun
Lettuce

Grill the chicken breast, I like to season mine with spices. Pick something that you like, either poultry seasoning, Grill Mates Chicken seasoning, the possibilities are endless.
Saute red onions in olive oil till tender, you could even add minced garlic to onions if you want (it is really much better with the garlic). Place Chicken breast on bun, top with sauteed red onion and blue cheese and lettuce. Serve with either a salad, veggie of choice or baked beans.

When I choose a Whole wheat bun I make sure that there is no High fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated Oils, or enriched flour in my buns. Please read the next post as to why I have chosen to eliminate these from my diet as much as possible.

Yoga

I did yoga this morning with Chaz Rough founder of Yogamazing, and it was amazing! I definitely will be working out with him more often on my AppleTV via podcast. I did the abs session this morning and man does it work! He has several workouts, this is the first one that I have done but it will not be my last one. You can check out his website for more information at www.yogamazing.com.

What to do when eating out

One of the things I like to do when going out to dinner is, if I know ahead of time that we are going out and where I will look up the restaurant on the internet and see if they have a menu listed as well as nutritional information. You can help yourself out a lot by knowing what you would order before even getting there. Even if the menu is the only thing listed, read through it and try to pick out the better choices, such as lower in fat and carbs. If you know the portion size is bigger than you would like to have, either get someone to share it with you or when you order also ask for a to go box and put half of it in the box right off the bat; this will help keep you from being tempted to eat it all right then. Just think you can have a wonderful lunch the next day! My husband and I often split a meal or sandwich because the portion sizes today are just way too much! Pay close attention to salads when eating out, you may think that they are the better choice but in some cases they are your worst choice. It really all depends on what is on the salad, if they put sugar coated pecans, bacon, fried chicken, different types of cheese, these can all add up in calories. This is not to say that you have to eat just lettuce in your salad but be aware how much other stuff, other than vegetables, is on there because everything adds up and pretty soon you have a salad that is over 1000 calories! When ordering a sandwich try ordering it without a bun! It is actually pretty good and you can reduce about 100 to 150 calories from your dinner, trust me it all adds up pretty darn fast. Remember these are all choices that you have to make, if you want to lose weight and or get healthy by eating better then you have to make the choice to eat better even when eating out. Yes, you can splurge sometimes, but just remember you need to not over do it otherwise you will be miserable, and trust me, once you do this a couple of times you will learn not to do it again because it is not worth it.

My history of eating habits

I didn't used to have good eating habits. I can remember about 20 years ago when my husband and I first got together, we used to eat frozen fish sticks, Kraft macaroni and cheese, hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. The number one thing that was a staple in our house was Kraft macaroni and cheese. We also used to eat out at fast food restaurants a lot, it didn't help that I used to work at McDonald's, so not only did I usually eat breakfast and lunch there but sometimes dinner as well, depending on my shifts. We maintained this bad habit for about 7 years and then discovered that we really liked to cook. We didn't have a lot of money when we met so most of what we ate back then was based on what we could afford. Once we started experimenting with different recipes and cooking we started eating a little better. We still had a long way to go, we were at least eating more home cooked meals and less fast food, we also reduced our quantity of processed foods by a lot. The real change came about 10 years ago when all of my health issues started developing; we knew we had to make the change. I started reading more about my health conditions and what I needed to do in order to keep them more under control and live a healthy life. The key to making major changes in your life is to start slowly and just read about it, pick one thing and work hard to change that habit before you try to change another habit. I think it is good to make a list of things you would like to change in your lifestyle and keep that posted, maybe, up on the fridge. Then each month introduce another change, if monthly is too fast go every couple of months. You really have to adjust it to what you know you would do, but the key is to have the list posted and maybe along side each item set a goal date that you would like to have this task accomplished by. This will help hold you more accountable to your tasks. Work hard at making an honest effort to change these habits, don't allow yourself to say "Oh, I will push that one to next month because I am just not ready to do it", make yourself try to stick to it. But again, don't do too much too fast, you don't want to set yourself up to fail, keep it realistic, but keep yourself accountable as well. Once you have developed your new habits you will notice a difference in how you feel, I may be slight but wait until you start adding more, you will be amazed at how much better you feel. Then when you decide to revert back to an old habit you will notice how bad you feel. One good example is, I stopped drinking pop, every once in a great while, I will have one, and I can’t even finish it, it makes me feel so bloated and miserable. Remember the key is to take things slowly, don’t do too much too fast and hold yourself accountable. You can do it!!

My reasons for getting healthy!

I decided to put this blog together for many different reasons; health issues and the lack of books that are realistic to my life. There are many books out there that have been written on diet, health and what to do to get healthy. But if your like me, I have read several of those books and these books are good, but they lack one thing, realistic information for the average person. Some of the diets that are listed in those books contain foods that the average person will not eat nor do they have access to or they are too time consuming to make, or very expensive. They also talk about diets, I don't believe in diets I believe in lifestyle changes. As everyone knows diets do not work and as soon as you stop following the diet you gain the weight back that you have just worked so hard to lose. One of the other reasons I decided to put this blog together is because I want to share what I have learned over the years in changing my lifestyle habits due mainly to health issues. It usually takes a health issue for people to make that lifestyle change, but what I hope to do is convince people to make that change before it is too late and the damage is done. I thankfully didn't have a life threatening illness that convinced me to make the change, I had issues with Heartburn, sometimes so bad that I thought I was having a heart attack, I lost 20 pounds in a month and had virtually stopped eating because it was just too painful, I had to sleep sitting up. I finally broke down and went to the doctor and had several tests run to find out that I had Gastroesophageal Reflux and a small Hiatal hernia, after being put on medication and changing my food choices I soon recovered and have been able to return to some of the foods that I so love. I am like most people and that I love food, I love to eat so I have had to make some small changes in my life. I have learned that you can still have some of the things that you like but just make them a little healthier and they still taste just great. Several years ago I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's Disease and Hypothyroidism, this has created some challenges for me and has helped push me to research lifestyle changes as well as become more versed in the world of fitness. When you have a thyroid problem you tend to gain weight and it makes it extremely hard to lose any weight. The Hashimoto's Disease causes joint pain, and fatigue as well as many other issues. I decided to make some drastic changes in my life, I wanted to be healthier and I wanted to be able to retire and enjoy my retirement (yes, I know I am only 40 so I have a ways to go before I retire) however, I don't want to worry about using up all the money that I had saved for retirement to pay medical bills. I also wanted to continue to do the things that I love doing, such as hiking, biking, I wanted to make sure that I could still do this when I retire. I have watched so many people over the years get heavier and unhealthy and not being able to enjoy their retirement they way that they had hoped. I decided to learn more about exercise and how to do it right, so I took a personal training class and received my certification as a Personal Trainer, I have also been reading anything and everything about nutrition, what is good, what is bad, portion control, etc. I in turn have become more healthier and feel so much better, I feel better about myself and I love educating people about how to be healthy. One of my goals is to help you get healthy and enjoy your life, make you feel better about yourself. I am hoping that all of the research that I have done will have taken the work out it for you and makes it much easier for you to want to make yourself and your family healthier. I have make health my passion in life, my passion to help everyone be as healthy as they can be, it does take some effort to start but once you start making some slight changes it then becomes a habit and you know once you develop a habit it is hard to break a habit. Once you develop your habit you will see that you feel better and when you slack off you will notice it and want to get back at it. I hope you all will enjoy and find by blog helpful!
Comments are always welcome and appreciated.