You Are What You Eat, so WE HAD TO CHANGE!

As most of you know we spent eight years as missionaries living in El Salvador and working with Good News in Action (GNIA) and Vida Nueva Baptist Church.  Our primary responsibility was to help facilitate the 8-12 GNIA mission trips each year. Not quite half of the trips were in El Salvador, but the rest required us to travel to one of the other countries where teams of Salvadoran missionaries, sent out from our church, planted VidaNueva churches. 

In any given year we would be away from home in El Salvador for a total of 6-7 weeks, traveling to Managua, Nicaragua, Guatemala City, Guatemala, San Jose, Costa Rica, Bogota, Colombia and San Pedro Sula, Honduras for a week at a time. We would join teams being sent from churches in the states and spend the week as the liaison between our missionaries and the church teams. 

Especially during the mission trips, fast food was on the menu almost every day; twice a day most of the time.  Although we tried, even when we were at home in El Salvador it wasn't easy to eat healthily. Pupusas (the national dish of ES) are delicious, but not really healthy.  The Salvadorans have a very carb driven diet which includes, pupusas, rice, beans, tortillas, bread, more pupusas and more bread.

  

Now that we're back in the states, we're both trying to eat healthier--not necessarily be on a diet, but working to develop healthy eating habits that will serve us well now and in the future. These are the habits we're working on:

• Eating "less" white foods (white bread, white pasta, white rice, etc.) and substituting  whole-grain varieties in their place.
• Eating lean meats (chicken, turkey, pork and beef), increasing the amount of fish/seafood and even having a vegetarian lunch or dinner from time to time
• Using only good oils, mostly olive oil, and completely avoiding fried foods.
• Eliminating sugar except for special occasions.
• Getting the day off to a great start with a nutritionally-dense breakfast.
• Having our biggest meal of the day at lunch.
• Leaving snack foods, junk foods, and most processed food in the store where they belong.
• Using fresh fruits and vegetables more than canned or frozen. Making organic choices especially when it comes to produce on the "dirty":list.  Using Thieves Fruit/Veggie Soak on all our produce.
• Eating at home almost all of the time so we have control over the portions, cooking methods and quality/freshness of our food.
• Taking supplements that support our health: vitamin B, C and D/calcium, recommended by our primary care physician,multigreens, and a probiotic.  
• Water, water, water, and more water, as it's so easy to pick up useless calories in drinks.  The exception is 2 ounces per day of Ningxia Red, a wolfberry-based drink from Young Living.

I spend time each weekend menu planning otherwise it is easy to fall into the same trap of swinging by "fill in the blank" to pick up something to eat. We added two small raised-bed planters to our back patio last summer and harvested our own tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce and zucchini.  Our winter crops are lettuce, kale, cauliflower, beets and carrots.  In addition, we've joined the community garden in Sunnyvale which allows us to share in the work and the harvest.

I leave you with a picture of today's vegetarian lunch--low-fat crustless asparagus quiche and green salad with lettuce (fresh from our garden), cucumbers, grapes and toasted pumpkin seeds topped with homemade Dijon Vinaigrette.  Delicious!