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It's no secret that I'm a bit of a hippie. I'm a dread lock wearing, oil loving, kombucha drinking, Whole30 eating girl that has a desire to minimize and simplify my family's life.
I get rid of toys if my kids haven't touched them in about 6 months. We only get our kids one or two pairs of pants/shorts and enough shirts to get through most of a week without doing laundry. Our kids have a pair of flip flops and a pair of Chucks and that's their shoe options. We keep things simple. We make our own laundry soap. We make art for our home. We make our own tables. I cut our kids' hair and Jonathan's hair.
We try to keep our lives free of clutter and extra activities so we can spend time together as a family. I highly doubt we will look back at our lives when our kids are old and grown and say, "man, I wish I would have sent them to school/daycare so I could have worked." or "I wish we didn't spend so much time with our kids".
I see so many people rushing around with their kids trying to get them to every sporting event, and every activity they get invited to, every piano or guitar lesson (or both). Makes me exhausted just listening to their busy lives. Which brings me to my next crazy idea (and yes, I have many of them).
I want to travel. I want to take at least 2 years with my family and travel. I want to see the US. I want to travel to lots of beaches and national parks and waterfalls. I want our kids to experience this country we live in. I have only seen a handful of the states and I would love to make my way through at least half of them in those 2 years with my family. I have researched, and researched for quite some time.
I've listened to podcasts, read blogs, talked to people who have traveled full-time with their families. If Jonathan told me today that he's ready, I would have a for sale sign in our yard tomorrow and all our items on craigslist tonight. I would sell it all and go right now. I have an idea of the route I would want to take and places I want to go first. I've priced travel trailers and fifth wheels and trucks to pull fifth wheels. I've researched how to paint the inside of the trailer so it would feel more like home. I've researched healthy cooking over camp fires and how to make some money on the road. Jonathan can work from anywhere with good internet and I can figure out how to sell some homemade items for extra cash along the way.
I want to go. I want to meet people with the same interests that we have. I want to meet people who want to go and experience life with their families in tow. I don't want to wait until our kids are grown and gone. I want to see the world through their eyes and learn with them. I want to see their faces when they see Niagra Falls, and NYC and I want to be there with them when they see the giant Red Woods.
I want to be there when Jonathan lets them start their first fire or teaches them how use a compass. I want to be there when he teaches them to play the guitar. I want to listen to them sing a song they made up around a camp fire. I want to watch the movies that they will make when we're on the road and listen to the stories they write about their experiences. I want to live life with them and I want to make every day a family adventure.
I'm ready to go, are you, Jonathan?
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Guys! We only have 5 more days on our first Whole30 journey. I can't even believe it. If you don't count the few times I ran to my room crying at the smell of fresh pizza, cookies, and biscuits, and waffles... then I'd say we've done really well.
Eating clean is hard when you have picky kids. On one hand I want them to be super healthy and conscious of what they eat, but on the other hand I don't want them to stress out over if they have had one too many bananas in the day, or if they should eat a chocolate chip cookie because they have already eaten a granola bar that day. I want them to be kids. I want them to play. I want them to be carefree and enjoy their childhood.
In the meantime I can be a good example and teach them how to cook a healthier version of spaghetti, or a healthier version of chocolate chip cookies. They'll learn by what we do, not by what we preach at them.
Be a good example for your kids today. Choose an apple over that banana muffin, but do it with a smile. Then go outside and beat them in a good game of kickball!
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You know, a lot of times we see people going on and on about their perfect diet and their perfect lives with their perfectly photographed food and - well - it's easy to get discouraged and overwhelmed. I know we do. You're probably imagining them living in some perfectly designed Martha Stewart kitchen where every dish turns out flawlessly and they've adhered exactly to every specification of what they're allowed to eat. Just to be clear - that's not us. We're trying our best to really do this Whole30 thing right, but we are not perfect. No one is. So don't get discouraged! Don't give up! We're going to tell you how we've totally screwed up so far this month. Ready? Set? Go!
Potato Chips
I know you're laughing at us right now. Of course you can't have potato chips on Whole30, right!? Well..see just recently white potatoes got added to the "go" list and we grabbed some potato chips cooked in the right oil with just sea salt - no other ingredients. We thought we were good! But then we read the part about no fries or chips. Sigh...
Sweet Potato Chips
These are pretty much our lifesavers. We can munch on these provided they are clean and have the right ingredients, dip them in salsa or guacamole. Awesome snack! But there was one type - the Terra Spiced Sweet Potato Chips - we were eating all the time and then realized they had some evaporated cane sugar in them. Man, they were like the best ones, too. Super lame!
Chilean Lime Avocado Oil Chips
Yeah, we like chips. Don't judge us. It's just - you need something crunchy now and then, you know? Anyway, they're pretty clean but not clean enough. Also, they're white potato chips. But they're dang good.
Honest Fizz Drinks
Thankfully, there are lots of naturally flavored seltzer waters that we can drink. This is not one of them. It looks so nice and honest and natural doesn't it? Turns out naturally sweetened means "stevia sweetened." Marketing got us, dang it! We didn't actually drink these, but we bought a bunch of them and had them in the fridge before we noticed. Hey kids - you want to try a new drink?
Eating Out
We have tried our best not to eat out this month, but we're a busy family and sometimes it happens. It's extremely hard to eat anything Whole30 approved, decent, and somewhere the kids will eat, too. Build your own burrito bowl places like Salsaritas and Chipotle work pretty well as long as you put the right stuff on it. Unless you said "olives" and the guy behind the counter thought you said "cheese" and proceeds to dump cheese all over it. Yeah there were a few strands of cheese left even after he tried to clean it off. And I ate them. I tried to get the side salad at Chick-fil-A and forgot that it had cheese on it, too. I got as much as I could off, but ate some. Also, a side salad without dressing is gross. Finally, we did cheat a little on our youngest's birthday. We went to Red Robin and got bunless hamburgers with sweet potato fries. I know the fries weren't approved, but they were dang good!
Wrapping Up
Eating only whole foods is hard. It requires a lot of prep work, planning and commitment. But in a culture where nearly all the food we eat is mass produced to some extent it's nearly impossible to do this Whole30 thing perfectly. And that's ok. You do your best, keep going if you mess up and don't worry about everyone else. You're not doing it for them anyway, right? Right.
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Crazytown. Absolute crazytown. Before March of this year I don't think any sort of "diet" Ashley and I had ever gone on stuck more than 5 days. But since then we've spent 3 months with (mostly) no sugar, wheat and dairy, 21 days on an insane detox and now we're halfway through Whole30 in the month of August.
Who are we? We are in crazytown. Posting everything you eat every day is nearly impossible, and while we will be sharing some delicious new recipes with you soon, we thought we'd take today to reflect a bit about non-food things we've started to notice as a result of being on this journey. I'll go first, and then Ashley will chime in below.
Jonathan
Much like when we stopped the sugar/wheat/dairy earlier this year*, I've noticed a new level of focus, energy and just plain feelin' great. Not that I thought I felt bad before. It's kind of hard to explain, but once you've been away from a lot of processed food for a couple of weeks you'll understand. It's like there's this whole other side of you you didn't realize was there. I just feel great. Like all the time. I'm not as frantic about food as I used to be.
When your sugar levels are crashing constantly it leads to all kinds of weird cravings. I will say the first week I was craving all kinds bizarre things. Like Fig Newtons. Really, Jon? You would break your Whole30 pledge for a Fig Newton? Pull it together! But now - I don't know - I'm just not worried about food as much. I know what we need to eat and most of the sugar heavy, empty carb stuff just doesn't sound good to me. Who am I?! Crazytown.
Even weirder, my skin is different. I've generally had chronically dry skin since I can remember, but the last week rolling out of bed I haven't even needed lotion or coconut oil to make it stop looking like the desert. All this makes me think that I've literally been drugging myself with processed food, sugar and wheat - and causing all sorts of unrelated issues in my body.
Did I mention I used to have terrible acid reflux before we started this and now it's 100% gone? Crazy. Town.
Ashley
Guys, let me tell you about my feet. As long as I can remember my feet have been so callused and cracked and dry and just gross and embarrassing really. Like, so bad I was too embarrassed to go get a pedicure. Now, my feet are looking so good. They are soft, not cracked look 90% better. That's the first thing I've noticed in the last 17 days.
Next up, my clothes y'all. My pants are literally falling off. I'm ready to go down a size in jeans but refuse to buy jeans until the next size down. I have one old pair that fit 3 kids ago that I am finally wear. After those get big, I am totally going shopping! And that's big news because I absolutely hate shopping.
Last thing is my overall feeling of awesome. I'm able to actually get up in the morning and go for a walk before my kids wake up. I have energy all day and don't feel the need for a nap. My head feels clearer (hard to explain). My vision even feels better. Sometimes I used to have a hard time concentrating on things and my eyes would do funny stuff, but they haven't for the last two weeks.
I wish I could say all my cravings are gone. We celebrated Ada's birthday with cookie cake and OMG it smelled so amazing. It was all I could do not to eat that piece Ada left on the table. Jon was outside and kids were upstairs...no one would know. But, I didn't do it. It's still in the fridge wrapped up as I begin to drool type this. While I still have the hankering to knock out a dozen Krispy Kreme Doughnuts every now and then, I somehow have the will power to just say no. Which is huge cause I am not know to have much will power.
Oh, and grocery shopping. Once you start eating healthy you become hyper-aware of just how much stuff we eat is full of junk - chemicals, sugar, preservatives, etc... It's kind of gross walking around in the grocery store and seeing people's carts filled with so much fake food makes me sad.
I totally get it, too - it's so much cheaper to buy the mass produced, pre-packaged stuff, but even though we are spending more eating this way we don't have to go to the doctor, we aren't on medications, we have no real health problems. We're so happy to have tried this Whole30 thing. It has changed our lives.
Our kids are eating a lot of what we make and really thinking about their food choices. The last few mornings our 4 year old said he didn't want to eat cereal for breakfast. He wanted to eat some healthy fruit. Like totally on his own - we haven't been pushing them to do this with us.
I wish I had known about this my whole life. Not only are we improving our health, we are teaching our kids how they can live healthier as well - and that's what it's all about.
Next up we'll be posting some new recipes and talking about the ways we've messed up while doing Whole30. You heard me - it's time to be a little more realistic because no one's perfect.
*The no sugar/wheat/dairy was an aspiration and not to be taken literally :) It was how we ate about 95% of the time, but made exceptions when necessary.
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We visited Portland in July this year and one of the stops we were looking forward to is this place called Lardo. Oh. My. Goodness. The name is perfectly fitting and I didn't regret a single bite. It was a magical combination of potatoes and onions and banana peppers and fried pig and it. was. amazing!
However, since we are eating clean (as clean as we can) and doing this Whole30 this month I just HAD to find a way to make a version of Lardo's dirty fries, clean. Behold....I give you Clean Dirty Fries.
First, wash your potatoes (I choose red potatoes) and then cut them in thin strips.
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Ashley Longnecker / August 27, 2014
Jonathan Longnecker / August 19, 2014
We’re Jonathan & Ashley Longnecker. We love weird ideas, great food, travel, drawing, music, homeschool, tattoos, dreads, woodworking, design and our 4 amazing kids.