Our Journey to Healthier Living

Our Starting Point

When Kerry and I got married in 2012, we ate the standard North American diet. We stocked up on frozen foods while on discount at the grocery store and regularly ate pizza and fried chicken take-out. I was not a good cook at the time, refusing to add salt to my food then complaining that my food is dry and bland.

I enjoyed baking, so I made cupcakes and cookies regularly. I gifted the sugary goodness to coworkers and friends. “They are home-made, so it has got to be good to eat!”, so we would say...

We came home from work, pop in some frozen food into the microwave and sit down to watch movies (Kerry) and cross-stitch (me) for the evening. We did not have children at the time, no health or weight issues and had no care in the world.

Our Contemplation Stage

Kerry and I are both pharmacists. We work in the health care field. We see people daily who are diagnosed and live with heart conditions, diabetes, cancer, and others. To broaden my education, I studied for and passed the exam to become a Certified Diabetes Educator.

I started to encourage people to eat healthier and teach people about where carbohydrates came from. Many people would listen politely, but occasionally, I would get the comment “At least you don’t have to worry about your weight. You can eat whatever you want.”

It tugged at my conscience that I didn’t eat the way that I would recommend.

Our First Baby Steps

That nagging conscience led me to do something about my eating habits. I knew that I couldn’t eat any significant amount of vegetables, so my decision was: eat one bite of any vegetable per meal. I would boil a head of broccoli a week and ate one floret with most meals.

Over the course of a month, the one floret of broccoli didn’t seem so bad. It was easier to chew, which meant I could actually taste it now. The overwhelming need to hide its taste subsided. I got used to it! Without really trying hard, I was willing to start eating two or three florets at a time.

Don’t get me wrong, two or three florets wasn’t going to have much of an impact on anything. No one is going to lose any weight from that, but little did we know, it was my first step of many to healthier living.

The Impact of Having Children

I want the best for my children. Everyone does. I read article after article, website after website, YouTube video after another about how to ensure my child grows up well: how should they sleep, what should they eat, no screen time, what toys should they play with, and so on.

I stumbled upon the book “French Kids Eat Everything (And Yours Can, Too)” by Karen Le Billon. A Canadian mother recalls the turmoil involved with moving her two picky-eater girls to France and the differences in food culture. The French eat three home-cooked meals a day and no snacks whatsoever. Slowly they learned to adopt and appreciate the unwritten rules with food. And so, our new food journey arose.

When our daughter started on solids, she had 3 meals and 1 snack per day. Each meal must include one vegetable, one meat, one carb and one fruit. She needed to finish the vegetable and meat, eat most of the carbohydrate (not usually a problem), before she was allowed to have the fruit. It was a rule for her AND for us. We couldn’t force her to do it and not do it ourselves! And the next step was taken.

If I wanted my children to eat a varied diet, I had to do it myself. If I didn’t want them to eat processed foods, I couldn’t have it either. (Although I am guilty of sneaking some in after they went to bed). If they had to eat three cherry tomatoes, I had to eat at least three cherry tomatoes AND look like I liked it. Ugh! Disgusting.... You would do anything for your children. This was one of my sacrifices for our children.

Learning To Cook

I found healthier foods that I was willing to eat, but there was usually something that I didn’t like about it: it was too sour, it had too much spinach in it, etc. The pickiness never left me! My solution: make it myself!

Being on maternity leave, I had enough time to make one to two meals each day. It didn’t always taste the best. Thankfully, Kerry was not willing to let anything go to waste, and he ate almost everything that I made even if I was not willing to. In time, food started to taste better. I was on the hunt to find different ways to hide healthy food into the meals, mostly for my benefit.

My Grief With Cooking

There came a time when I became very resentful of the time I spent cooking. Why should I spend so much time cooking when there is so much convenient food out there? I was torn. I wanted to eat healthier. I also wanted to have more time to get back to my crafts. I wanted my food to taste good. I didn’t want to cook every day, multiple times a day. I was back to working full time and mourning the little amount of time that I had for myself. I cried, more than once. I begrudgingly made dinner some nights.

We started to eat processed foods a bit more. But wait.... why don’t they taste as good as I remembered them to be? It actually tasted not enjoyable to eat... You don’t realize how your taste buds change to what you eat. I actually liked to eat my home-cooked food better than processed food!

In the end, I want to eat good tasting food. Everyone does. Over the decade, my palette evolved to enjoy the healthy food rather than processed food.

"Why should I spend so much time cooking when there is so much convenient food out there?"

The Subtle Effects of Healthy Living

Subtly, I notice that I FEEL better eating healthier. We often talk about objective (hard numbers) when discussing health: weight, waist circumference, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol levels. Occasionally, you may see a comment about positive mood benefits from physical activity, but I rarely see comments about it with dietary changes.

• If I eat healthier, I feel less tired.

• If I eat healthier, I feel less anxious.

• If I eat healthier, I suffer far less PMS symptoms and have less menstrual bleeding and cramps.

• If I eat healthier, I do not ache as much as I used to.

These changes were not immediate and only noticeable if I stick to eating well. If I start to eat more processed foods again, I will start to feel my body becoming sluggish and my mind less clear.

I have a new reason to eat healthier: to have more energy, to think more clearly, to sleep more soundly and to ultimately feel better for as long as I possibly can.

Small Changes Can Make a Big Impact

People bring prescriptions in to see me when they have been diagnosed with something. I rarely have the chance to counsel people about healthy living as preventative medicine, promoting healthy practices to improve well-being and prevent disease from even developing. However, it is possible to reverse some diseases by adopting a healthy lifestyle. It is not easy to do it all at once. Our mind and body don't respond to huge changes well. We grieve and mourn. My philosophy is to change a little at a time. At first, it seems fruitless, but so long as you continue to do the little changes, they all add up and have a bigger impact. Your body changes and adapts.

Look out for a future blog post on the evidence behind healthy living and my practical tips to adopting it.

Kerry can eat almost anything, whether it tasted good or not. He was taught not to waste food and lived by it. However, I was one of the pickiest eaters that he knew. I hated vegetables. I didn’t like salad dressings, so salads were out of the question. Tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, yuck! If I had to eat it (because people were around and I didn’t want to look bad), I would take a tiny bite and chase it with something better.

Oh, I look back at how I used to eat and cringe. I ate predominantly processed foods, with a sprinkling of some fruit and home-baked goods. I probably ate less than 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a week, which is what you’re supposed to eat in a day!

Above Image: Eating fried foods and sugary treats.

Image: "French Kids Eat Everything" By Karen LE billon Book Cover and an image of the French Food Rules

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