I Thought I Was Exhausted Because I Was A Mom….That Wasn’t It

I’m just your average mom. My undergrad is in music and my graduate degree is in Bible. I have never really studied nutrition or paid much attention to it.  However, after discovering how good I could feel with better nutrition, and learning about the connection between nutrition and disease, I have started to research and implement changes to improve our diet as a family.

When my first son was born nine years ago, I made all of his food from scratch. As we introduced solids, he happily ate the roasted veggies and purees that I made for him. Three kids later some serious pickiness had set in.  Add a touch of survival mode due to the stress I was under as a mom and it didn’t take long before we were all eating chicken nuggets, waffles and fast food on the regular. My fourth pregnancy was especially exhausting but surprisingly,  after making some simple changes to my nutrition, I had an amazing amount of energy for my 5th pregnancy. It was then that the lightbulb went off for me and I realized that I wasn’t exhausted because I was a mom, I was exhausted because I was nutritionally depleted. Feeling like I had cracked the code – I set out to make some changes.

Step one was to get more produce into our family. I had heard the “five a day” guideline from health.gov and myplate.gov. I’m sure we never met that. I was introduced to the higher standards set by the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society.  We weren’t even close.  However, we found a super easy way to at least get started by adding dehydrated produce powders to our diet in capsule and gummy form. This started to reprogram our taste buds and cravings and has set us up for future successes. It was and is the easiest part of our journey towards better health.

Our next step was to improve the quality of our diet. No judgement please, but I was worn out as a mom and was taking a break from the meal time battles. It was just easier to feed them what they wanted to eat and teaching them to expand their pallets was not ranking during the survival mode years. This meant my daughter ate a lot of cereal. My son ate a lot of bread and pasta and my other son ate a lot of melted cheese. It was and is really hard to set limits around the constant stream of candy, doughnuts, cookies, ice cream and soda that they are offered regularly for free outside of our home just as a normal part of living life in our culture. 

I needed to get a vision of what I was working towards so after lots of research,  I set some goals. I don’t expect to ever reach perfection, but I am trying to toggle bit by bit away from some choices and towards other choices as circumstances and budget allow.  We are slowly adjusting our food budget by switching out unhealthy foods for healthier foods (crackers for popcorn), controlling food waste (a small serving of organic milk vs. serving large glasses of conventional milk that many times got dumped out), and planning our meals so there is less waste and less need for take out (this one is my current challenge).

We found the “clean 15” and the “dirty dozen” as helpful guides for buying organic when we can.

We also found an easy way to grow our own better than organic produce by setting up a Tower Garden in our living room.  Growing your own food is the safest and cheapest way to go.  It has been such a fun family project!  

I’ve mentioned a few helps for our family – hopefully this will inspire someone out there on their own journey.  As moms we often joke about needing coffee, wine and chocolate to manage our fatigue and stress.  And while I won’t knock any of those in moderation (and enjoy all of them) – if they become your primary source of energy each day – I’m here to say there is a better way.  I have found that transitioning a family from the “Standard American Diet” is kind of like turning a cruise ship around. It can’t be done quickly, but little by little, progress is made.  I have been inspired to live a healthier life and my family is catching on and we don’t worry about slip ups.  Maya Angelou said it best when she said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better”.  I’m thankful we have found some resources to help us to do just that.