Eating Clean: Final Thoughts

I can't believe it's been six months since we changed how we ate and started to eat clean!  Man, time flies...I know, I say this over and over again, but it just blows my mind.  Like seriously, it's going to be Christmas soon.  Gack.

So yeah...it's been six months since we've changed how we ate and yep, we're still following the plan.   After seeing Hubs' awesome results on his cholesterol levels, we are basically doing more of the same...cut way back on our meat and refined sugars, we eat tons of fish, veggies and fruits, whole grains and beans galore and cut way, way back on salt...I still, however, cannot get the man to drink water.  Bah. 

What have we noticed six months in?  Well, a lot with Hubs.  He doesn't get the afternoon crazy drop off like he used to get after eating lunch, and he's noticed a big difference in our runs and when he was playing hockey.  He used to get easily gassed at hockey, but the first night he came home and said he felt fantastic and could keep up with the young bucks no problem.  He was also getting these weird hives after his workouts, bad enough that he had to take antihistamines every time we'd run but he stopped taking them soon after we changed our diet. 

With me, the biggest change has been the sodium.  The hardest thing for me for sure, as I'm a total salt fiend...honestly, the saltier the better...like I was the kind of girl that would stick my finger in the bag of Doritos so I could get all the salty seasoning at the bottom of the bag.  This is crazy...but I actually find a lot of foods too salty now.

Gasp.

I know!  This is crazy!  I actually kind of can't believe that I used to eat some of the stuff I did and don't know how I did it.  I rarely season my food now, and cook with very little salt...I also buy all low sodium or no salt added foods.  If I go to a restaurant to eat a meal, I'm almost always dying of thirst after.  Take today for instance...I went out at lunch to get a soup and sandwich and ordered a cream of cauliflower soup.  As I tucked into my lunch, I thought man, this soup is salty...I actually didn't really enjoy it but finished it off anyways (there are starving kids in Africa you know!) and felt sick all afternoon and have been guzzling water constantly since then.  Blah.  Same thing happened a few weeks ago when I opened up a bag of those Quaker rice chips...I had a few and thought holy crap this is salty and actually ended up throwing them out.  I actually don't like how salty things make me feel now. 

So...if a diehard saltaholic like me can change, anyone can make a change for the better.  Eating clean might seem hard at first, but it's so worth it for your health and both Hubs and I are totally on the clean eating wagon.  Yes...it's way more fun to have a monster mud pie or a burger and fries...and it's not like you can't do that stuff occasionally.  Hubs and I still eat out and have our one cheat meal a week (not a full day of debaucherous eating like we did before) and we're still diehard foodies, but we're finding that we actually crave healthy food now.  The other benefit to eating clean is that I used to be an avid food logger and calorie counter.  I'm not against those things because they're great tools for losing weight, but I've found that if I concentrate on eating healthy foods most of the time (we all need to live a little!) and incorporate strength training into my workouts, I'm able to maintain a weight that I'm comfortable at fairly easily after a lifetime of struggling with my weight.

Eat healthy, lift something heavy and run a little...who woulda thunk.