What Are You Feeding Your Body?
About six months ago, my sweet husband came to me and told me he had been thinking and wanted to talk about something he wanted to do with his life. This quiet man does nothing without thinking long and hard about it first, so I knew this had to be a big deal. That night, we sat down at the dinner table together and he told me that he wanted to farm our 5 acres. I am not sure what my face looked like, but I’m sure my eyes were as wide as my face and was quiet (which is not something that I am often!) I was only quiet because I was thinking through what he just said to me. My first thought was ‘Yeah! Let’s do it!” Then, I start thinking about logistics and that is where my brain needs time to process. As I was sitting there quiet, he asked me what I was thinking. I told him that I am always going to support him in his endeavors and will be there right along the way. Then, I asked him why he wanted to do this. His answer is what we are going to be discussing this month (and will teach a lot about along our journey) and has me on board even more.
Our mission at Live Free has always been that we address the physical, chemical and emotional/spiritual parts of the body. One of those facets is talking about nutrition. What we put in our body, comes out. If we put crap in, we get crap out. I have been navigating this world for over a decade and have experimented with different things along the way. I’ve tried every diet, fad and protocol in the book and have adopted certain practices and thrown away other ones that didn’t work well for me. As we started looking into farming practices, we have come across things that we haven’t even thought about before. I will let Paul explain why he wants to farm our land but here are some of the principles and ideas we try to live by to live a free, healthy life.
-Buy Local - Eat in season: When you buy from local farmers/farmer’s markets, you inherently will eat in season. Our body is designed to break down certain foods in certain times of the year. This will also help us rotate our foods so we aren’t constantly eating the same thing all the time. The rotation will help the digestive system and can help with food sensitivities.
-Buy Organic - Dirty Dozen/Clean 15: Do you know what chemically sprayed plants do to your body? Research has shown that glyphosates (which is a main ingredient in Round-up) will bind to our liver cells and congest our detox pathways that can lead to non-fatty liver disease. It can also be major hormone/endocrine disrupter that can lead to many other issues. (These are just two things that could happen.) We suggest to buy organic as much as possible to limit this exposure to our body. If you can’t buy everything organic, the dirty dozen is a must! We always buy these foods organic.
-Grass-fed non-factory farmed Meats: You are what your animal eats. Factory farmed animals are usually fed grain ‘meal’ that is highly processed and hard to break down. They also live in harsher environments, which lead to them releasing stress hormones that will affect the muscle production and the quality of meat we get from that animal.
-Limit bag, can, boxed foods: Food should not have an ingredient list. The more we can eat REAL food the better our bodies will perform. When we buy anything we typically will get something with 5 ingredients or less in it. If it sounds like a chemistry experiment, we avoid it.
-Eat Fermented foods: Fermented foods gives us an array of good bacteria and probiotics that help our gut and digestive system. I have been making our own products and we try to have a little serving of it everyday.
These are just a few rules we have found throughout the years that have seemed to have stayed consistent with good health. I will continue to reiterate this but take it a day at a time. Start with one rule and master that. Then, go to the next one. Just never miss twice. If we can make these changes daily, you will start to see improvements with your health.
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