Since moving to Colorado, I’ve made a pretty big effort towards eating better, and taking better care of myself.  This has not been a perfect process, but I’ve also not spent too much effort beating myself up about my “mistakes.”  There are things I’m learning all the time, different things I’m trying, and while my body shape doesn’t seem to change, how I feel has changed tremendously.  I have better and more sustained energy, recover from minor to moderate injuries within a day or two, have less achiness overall, and rarely get sick any more.  These are all bonuses.

In the beginning, I gave up fast food.  That meant no more McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or any of the others.  And after years of eating such things, I did miss them.  But as the weeks went by, I missed them less and less, and finally realized that when I did indulge, they made me feel ill.

But I haven’t given up on all “fast food.”  I think there is fast food, and then there is fast food that is okay to eat.  I love Noodles and Company, which uses mostly fresh ingredients that they cook while you wait.  Chipoltle is not one of my favorites, but I like Q’doba, which also uses fresh foods and responsibly-raised meat.  I like places like Crazy Bowls and Wraps, Tokyo Joes (despite the bad experience we had at the one in our town), and fresh foods from the food bars at local grocery stores.  None of these places are perfect, but they are the way to go when home-made food may not be available or practical.

That being said, I can usually prepare a fresh dinner from scratch in 30 minutes or less.  That can be accomplished with chicken, or with eggs, or with ground beef or butcher-made sausages I get from my favorite small grocery.  A salad with fresh greens, tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, and seared chicken is pretty quick to make, even if the chicken breasts are still frozen.  And with my busy life, quick meals are important.  If I can’t put it in my crock pot, then it needs to be fast on top of the stove.

Gone from our family diet are most pre-packaged foods – pasta with sauce, rice with sauce, canned cream of mushroom soup, frozen dinners, etc.  I tend to use fresh ingredients, and if I don’t have those, I use frozen.  That way, I know exactly how much salt and seasoning is going on them, and what those seasonings are.  It was baby steps at first, of course, but I’ve slowly been eliminating foods with ingredients we don’t want.  My latest label-reading has me looking a lot harder at salad dressing.  Most of them list High Fructose Corn Syrup as their first ingredient.  I now choose ones that have “water” as their first ingredient, or “vinegar.”  I know what those things are and how my body will react to them.

It has been easy to do here in Colorado, because there is an emphasis on fresh, wholesome foods in all of the grocery stores.  The attitude toward food is very different than what I grew up with – we purchase local when we can (I buy all of my eggs from local producers), and buy fresh when we can.  I am blessed to be able to afford the luxury of buying good foods, and being able to leave behind the cheap, but dubiously nutritional, foods that we had eaten for many years.  I hope I will always be able to eat this way, now that I’ve become accustomed to it.

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