My 2020 Vision: Family
Here at POTG, we believe in fueling your body with food and not just eating on the fly. But because we know how our crazy American lives can be, we’ve been devoted to fast and easy, Chef-prepared meals that truly fuel the human body — and the human body with Autoimmune Diseases to boot!
This February, we want to hear about your 2020 Vision for your family and how eating real food plays a role. Our dear friend, Angie Morales (aka @RealFoodMama), is taking us on a journey and sharing her story and her 2020 Vision for her family!
Angie Morales on her 2020 Vision: Family
I grew up in a pretty traditional family where my dad would come home from work and my stay-at-home mother would have our dinner ready. We would sit down, say grace and dig in! It was time to recap about our day - television off and without the development of smart phones - it was true connection with each other.
Fast forward to adult life.
It’s common practice to conform to the same cycles of our upbringing, holding on to certain traditions. When I became a mom, I also cooked all of our meals from scratch. This cultivated a passion for nutrition. I began to understand that just like adults, certain foods we feed our children can have an enormous impact on cognitive and physical functions. For example; artificial food dyes have been shown to cause neurotoxicity, triggering a hyperactive response in most children such as ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Most foods on store shelves contain the addition of refined sugars (brown, white, or cane sugars and hidden words for sugar like maltose, dextrose, or even sucrose) which increase blood sugar, causing insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, or diabetes. A diet high in simple carbohydrates such as packaged snack bars or chips, white bread/rice, and fruit juices also contribute to many diabetes cases.
Everything adds up from the cereals and fruit juices (yes, even 100% organic!) we give our kids in the morning upon waking, to the sandwiches, pastas or mac & cheeses for lunch, and then the drive-thru options or boxed meals we provide for dinner. When we don’t eat what our bodies need, our energy levels go through a series of sky-rocketing and plummeting at abnormal levels, affecting blood sugar dysregulation which causes stress-response hormones to go out of whack, organs to work improperly and a depletion of vital nutrients that we need to thrive.
So, with recently transitioning from an entrepreneur to landing a typical 9-5 career last October, I found myself falling into the trap of eating out or getting food from restaurants delivered. I was short on time and just needed to get dinner on the table! I noticed a change in my health because of it; I became more sluggish, emotional and not as sharp as I usually am! When 2020 rolled around, I committed to meal planning, making simpler recipes for weeknight dinners, and even finding better sources of food to be delivered (like Paleo On the Go!) In the short weeks entering the new year, my energy stabilized and my brain fog was lifted due to my rededication to a focus on feeding my body what it needs to perform at it’s best. I noticed my kids were also more focused on their schoolwork thanks to these changes in their diet! What mom or dad doesn’t want that? It’s obvious that life is better when I make my family’s health the #1 priority!
Results of Angie's 2020 Vision: Family
I can honestly say that my cycle of planning and cooking to fuel my body, to eating whatever was easy, and now back to carefully watching what I feed myself and my family, has proven to me to be more valuable than I even realized. My 2020 Vision for my family is to live the best life we can, by fueling our bodies to maximize not only physical optimization, but mental as well.
