#MotivationMonday: Simple Foods vs Super Foods

I have come a long way on my healthy eating journey. I used to think I ate fairly healthy by eating so called “diet” foods, low calorie foods, and exercising my butt off daily. But the weight never came off. It was quite frustrating and my love/hate relationship with food stressed me out. I didn’t like cooking much because I didn’t know how to cook healthy or what to cook to help me and my husband eat healthier and lose some weight. Sure, everyone says “stop drinking soda”, “stop eating sugar”, “cut out all carbs”, and you will lose weight. Well, it’s not as simple as that, at least it wasn’t for me.

Last February, I started a detox with my friend who is a personal weight loss coach at www.free2bmediet.com. I completely detoxed my body of all sugars, starches, and carbs for 30 days and then I slowly (very slowly) started adding back in foods like gluten and full-fat greek yogurt to see how my body would react to it. It was a strict detox, but I was so determined to lose the weight and feel better in my body and to be able to learn how to cook healthy for both me and my husband, that I did the plan 100% and never fell off track.

The point of me sharing this story, is not about the weight loss. It’s about my journey of learning how to cook healthy and eat healthy for my body. Everyone is different and not everyone can follow the same plan and expect the same results. I reset my metabolism, and learned so much about what’s healthy and what’s not healthy and how different foods react with my body.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned over the past year is that there is no such thing as “bad” food. I used to think that food was either “good” or “bad” and that’s just not true, nor is it healthy to think that way. When you think of food as being “bad” you don’t enjoy it like you should and then you feel guilty afterwards about eating it.

I now look at foods as being simple foods or super foods thanks to a wonderful blog post I read on My Tailored Fitness Blog. Her blog post was about why they don’t ban junk food in their house and using the terms “Simple Foods” and “Super Foods” is how she explains foods to her daughter. This works not just for children, but for everyone!

A great example of this is…. Last weekend my husband and I went out to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch after running a few errands. We love to treat ourselves to wings and beer sometimes and Buffalo Wild Wings is such a fun atmosphere to splurge a little. Anyway, my husband and I came home and that afternoon my husband said to me “That lunch really made me feel tired and sluggish” and I went on to tell him that it’s because we don’t eat food like that hardly ever at all, so when we do we feel how it affects our body. I then told him about the foods we ate as being simple foods which taste good, but do nothing for our bodies so they make us feel a little sluggish. When we eat super foods (foods that provide energy and nutrition to our bodies) we feel great!

I was so happy that my husband actually noticed this difference in his body. Eating whole, unprocessed foods, is the key to a healthy body, mind and soul. It’s all about balance too! There is absolutely nothing wrong with having simple foods every now and then, but when you realize that they don’t provide you the energy and nutrition your body needs, you don’t want to eat them all the time.

We go through life not thinking about the foods we eat and how they actually make us feel. We just mindlessly eat them because they taste good, or because that’s what we grew up eating, or that’s what our friends are eating. Once you actually stop eating so many simple foods, and fuel your body with super foods you will notice a difference when you do end up eating simple foods.

It’s so amazing what our bodies tell us when we pay attention! Listening to my body and helping my husband eat healthy is what motivates me to never go back to feeling the way I used to feel! My body is healthy and happy and I want to keep it that way!

What motivates you to eat healthy?

XO, 

Carrie A Groff
Healthy, Fit & Barefoot!

“Happiness is Barefoot on the Beach”