So You Want to Eat Less Crap?

"Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”~ Michael Pollan

A couple days ago a friend of mine asked me how I know so much about holistic nutrition and eating naturally. I was raised on southern dishes, crisco, fast foods, and endless cereals and sweets. Seriously, my mom's pantry usually had about 10-12 cereals at a time because I ate the stuff everyday. I'd grab the stool and pull down hostess ding dongs, cookies and twinkies all the time.

Later on, I met a boy in high school who grew up in a house with fresh, organic vegetables, herbs for days, and they rarely or never at anything processed. They took oils and talked about foods healing ailments. I remember thinking...how...totally...wierd. Why would they not throw back some McDonalds or Frankenberry? It blew my mind how "healthy" their kitchen was. Everything in the fridge was green!

Looking back...they had it totally right.

A few years ago Michael and I were about to hop a flight somewhere and I wanted to grab a book to keep my ADD at bay my attention over the flight. I grabbed this book because well, why would any book have "bitch" on the cover? I was intrigued. This book, as basic and humorous as it was, started my obsession for health, nutrition and the food industry forever.

If you're interested in improving your eating habits but you don't want information/fear overload, this is a great, quick, simple read. Rory and Kim throw you a lot of information, it's generally correct, but they keep it basic. By the time I got off the plane, I finished the book, and I was in complete shock. 

“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.”~ Thomas Edison

After reading Skinny Bitch, I became obsessed with these accusations that milk was full of hormones, chemicals were added to everything causing free radical carnivals in our bodies, and animals were fed grain made out of...you guessed it...other dead, chemically altered animals. No thank you!

Over the next few months I was scared to touch any kind of meat. It literally scared me into a hardcore diet lol. I ate seeds, nuts, organic veggies, hardly anything processed. It nauseated me to look at meat for a while. My views on meat has changed, but at the time I was appalled.

Since that book, I've read many books over nutrition, diet/disease, organic/whole foods, the ridiculous food industry, and I continue to read new texts, blogs, and websites. Some of my motivation to learn more was a result of losing my dad to cancer, and my mother had breast cancer. You can quickly find data demonstrating the rise of cancers, heart disease, obesity and other diseases rising over the past few decades around the world because of a "Westernized" lifestyle. Some people tell me, no, no Sarah, don't tell me that stuff, I don't wanna know! Ignorance is bliss! I always laugh, but really, I think it's sad. If people would only do a little bit of research, they'd realize that in today's world of big corporations and mass production, they were simply putting crap into their bodies...hormones, chemicals, free radicals, antibiotics...which cause us to age faster, fatigue, lower immunity, screw with reproductive systems, and gain weight. Why is our country so diseased and overweight? Why do so many more children struggle to learn and focus? 

“Those who think they have no time for healthy eating, will sooner or later have to find time for illness.” ~ Edward Stanley

It's not hard to believe that the food industry is false and manipulative. I mean, look at these old ads...REAL advertisements! We look at these today and think, this is CRAZY!!! Well, I hope in another 50 years we'll look back and think that 90% of our current ads for food are insane. I hope in 20 years Kyle will gasp in disbelieve that his parents drank diet soda everyday. 

In a nutshell, from everything I've read over the past few years, people need to get back to basics. It blows my mind how people just ignore such an important subject. Now that I have a child, I'm even more concerned about what we eat. I mean, of course I love to go out and eat badly sometimes. I love mexican. I love wine and margaritas. I love me some sweets, and I'm obviously not 10% body fat. I try my best to make sure my family eats a healthy diet...especially Kyle. 

Soapbox Time...

If you can, buy organic food from farms or co-ops. Stop eating processed crap. Stop eating white flour products, refined sugar, and anything with chemicals on the label. If people ate the right way, like people did hundreds and thousands of years ago, we'd probably all live to 110 like those Aborigines hanging out in the Australian jungle (or at least, the ones not yet introduced to "modern" food). All of these bottles of synthetic vitamin supplements are not a replacement for food based vitamins and minerals...useless. If you're going to drink milk and eat dairy, good Lord at least buy organic! Eat GRASS FED, organic meats. Grain fed, "regular" meats at the supermarket are full of hormones and antibiotics, and those animals are fed with ground up hooves/plastics/feathers/diseasedcows/chickens grains, and packages say "all natural"! Hello, feeding them crap like that is NOT natural! Hmm...and we wonder why kids are going through puberty in 3rd/4th grade, so many women have fertility issues, and people are sick more than ever? I cringe when I see all the produce at the supermarket...it's sprayed (and grown with) fertilizers, pesticides and hormones. Washing produce can't rid you of the chemicals INSIDE the stuff. BUY LOCAL. (breathe, Sarah)

“Just because you’re not sick doesn’t mean you’re healthy”  ~Author Unknown

And for those of you thinking...oh Lord what a hippy. Off the soapbox. No, I'm only an aspiring food hippy when it comes to nutrition. I do realize many of these things the food industry has done over the years has enabled our farmers to feed a massive population. I voted for the other guy, I own guns, and I don't like the idea of paying taxes to support people sitting on the couch playing a $300 playstation, collecting a check, while I work my tail off and contribute to society. :)

Anyhoo, if you're interested in changing your lifestyle and eating habits, check out any of these books...they're all AMAZING books and I have learned SO MUCH from them! My favorites are The Cure, Fast Food Nation and The China Study. If you really want to scare yourself into eating organic, grass fed, farm raised meat....read Slaughterhouse...it's pretty hardcore:

Educate yourself. Start small. We do have choices.

Garbage in, garbage out. 

My Experiment: SARAH vs. #4

So, most people who come into contact with me on a regular basis would probably say I have pretty good teeth. I'd have to agree...they aren't too shabby, as long as I keep them nice n' bleached. :)

See? They look alright to me!?

Well, what most people don't know is that I have HORRIBLE teeth. I have the mouth of a 90 year old, or a crack smoker. Seriously. Most of my life I've had multiple cavities. As of right now, I have two root canals, four crowns, and maybe 5-6 fillings...I've lost count on those actually. 

I've asked dentists over the years why my teeth are so bad. I brush and floss everyday, I rarely chew sugar gum anymore (I lived on the stuff for maybe 10 years though), and I still get smacked with a giant "treatment plan" every time I see the dentist. I'm scared of the dentist as well. I've had a dentist catch the tissue under my tongue with the drill, cutting a thumb-sized hole under there, I've had painful root canals, painful drilling, double vision from the local anesthetic shot...so yeah, I hate going. It got so bad actually, that the last time I went to my dentist was when I was three months pregnant, around June 2010, and I put off any treatments until after having Kyle. Then, I finally got the courage to go a couple of weeks ago. This was the prognosis:

1 root canal

2 crowns

4 fillings

REALLY?? I almost died of course. This is why I don't go. The only thing I can blame this on is perhaps too much diet coke. I go through stages...I'll drink water for weeks then three diet cokes a day. Anyhow, I'm rushed to an endodontist to check out this root canal business on tooth #4. This is actually an incisor...a tooth that shows when I smile. Oh, it gets better.

Yesterday I roll up to this endodontist, and they do all these little tests on my teeth. She pops up, leans back and announces" Well Sarah, you don't need a root canal on tooth #4!" I'm like, really?!? YAAAY! She says "Nope! You need an extraction, and a dental implant."

WHAT? WHT? I literally said "what, like a meth mouth? like a drug addict? I'm 32 and I need a tooth pulled and an implant?! You've got to be joking?!?!"

She continued to show me the x-ray, talk about the bone in the root, some shadow, and how there's not quite enough there to hold up a root canal properly, yada yada yada, so extraction and a dental implant would be best. 

NOT cool!

Okay people...have you ever seen a dental implant? Check this crap out...

Uhhhh NO. I'm not about to set off airport security due to a giant bolt in my mouth! She hands me the brochure and tells me it's completed in stages, and this whole process may take 3-6 months.

WTH!?!?! Ooooh hell no.

So, as usual when I'm dealt with news I just refuse to accept, I research. I immediately start researching articles, actual research journals (because I've learned how to do that the correct way now, with this insane research course), books, message boards, everything, on alternative options.

In a nutshell, like everything else I've obsessively read about over the past 6/7 years, it boils down to my nutrition. I know much more about nutrition and talk about it more than I practice, but I study it everyday nonetheless. Anyhow, it boils down to having deficiencies in my diet. I need a lot more vitamin d, vitamin a, fat soluble vitamins, phosphorous, along with a few other things, and I need to completely cut out wheat, flour, and sugars (even fruit), stat. My mouth is crazy acidic...I need major alkaline pronto! My chart rocks...

Dentists all say that cavities and decay are irreversible. I beg to differ. If you do a bit of research, you learn that teeth are able to to heal themselves. And why wouldn't they? If good nutrition can correct heart disease, diabetes, digestive problems, allergies, etc., than why wouldn't our teeth improve with proper changes in nutrition?

So here's my experiment...not for the benefit of weight loss, detoxing, allergies, whatever, but for the simple benefit of halting and hopefully reversing my ridiculous decay. I don't expect the gaping hole in tooth #4 to disappear, but if it, and all of my other current cavities can stop, possibly improve and harden/remineralize, I'll take that over a freaking extraction! For the next 2-3 months I'm going to load up on fermented cod liver oil, high vitamin butter oil, healthy fats, veggies to no end, grass-fed only meats and raw dairy. I'm totally avoiding sugar, white flour and denatured grains. I've detoxed several times before, sometimes for weeks at a time, but this time the though of a gaping hole in my mouth and a giant bolt in my jaw has given me insane motivation to stick to it.

Now, before my mother freaks out while reading this, I'm getting a second opinion soon to discuss my alternative "plan" with another endodontist, but I'm putting off all dental work for about three to four months, at which time I'll return to my dentist, get another round of x-rays, and we'll see if my little experiment has worked, and helped any of my sad little teeth. (I will however return asap to fix the chip on one of my front teeth...I'm not hating on cosmetic procedures!) I would love to surprise the hell out of my dentist and tell her and her giant drills to stick it. :)

This awesome book, Cure Tooth Decay, by Ramiel Nagel, is SO imformative, and it's a great addition to my collection of holistic/nutritional texts. This book, along with several websites, message boards, reviews, testimonies and blogs (1  2  3 for example!) has been extremely helpful, and I wish I would've looked into this matter much sooner. I'm especially interested in this matter now that I have a son with eight teeth. I'll do anything to keep him out of a dentist chair!

Anyhow, I'll try to keep up with my progress and post blogs to keep myself accountable. I've been a pretty terrible eater this semester, with homework sucking my soul and my cutie pie toddler running me ragged. We'll see! If my teeth don't stop decaying, at least I'll be much less fluffy. :)

Trading diet cokes for pearly whites,

Young Teacher Dreams: The Conversation

So yesterday as I'm sitting in a computer lab frantically typing up my org theory paper, two undergrads sit at the computers directly behind me.

As these two girls completely distract me from my work, I realize they're both education majors. They're both pretty young because I heard they haven't completed their student teaching yet.

Objective: To teach in a pretty, exemplary school :)

Over the next 45 minutes, I reluctantly listened to these girls' thoughts, suggestions and expectations for when they get a teaching position. One girl even mentioned her preference for Southlake or Northwest, because she WILL NOT teach in a "scary district with hard kids". Yeeeah...you do that. 

I'm sure most ed majors have this mentality when they're exhausted and trudging through the education courses, hoping to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but it took everything I had not to turn around and yell "TAKE WHATEVER YOU CAN GET OR YOU'LL WORK AT A DAYCARE FOREVER". 

I listened to them talk about expectations, hopes, and their understanding of education. Yes, they're probably 19 and 20, but it was crazy to listen to them. It took my entire being not to turn around and talk to these girls, hug them, something. I can't remember exactly how the conversation went down, so I'll just list all the comments I remember. Brace yourself if you're a teacher:

I hope I get a school where I don't have any duties. My friend is a speech path at --- ISD and she doesn't have bus or lunch duty. Eww I don't wanna touch dirty kid fingers! 

I want a conference period first thing in the morning. That's definitely a question I would ask a principal.

OMG I can't wait to use this cute BEE management system. I found it online and it's so cute. I'm going to do my entire room in a bee theme, and I saved all these pics of cute bee bulletin boards I'm going to do!

Yeah I can't wait to make cute bulletin boards and change them for like every holiday and season!

I really don't want to do the ESL certification. I don't want to teach kids how to speak English! Ugh...so not fair. I know it helps with jobs, but seriously, I'm not teaching ESL kids. I don't speak Spanish.

Yeah I was talking to my friend who wants to take a special education test too. Why would she do that? If you get certified in special ed then they'll put inclusion kids in your class! Stress!

What are you taking this summer? I can't wait until we work and we have summers off. Ugh I've been in summer school every year! I'm SO ready for summers off.

If we go to trainings in the summer though, you get them out of the way and you don't have to do any trainings during the year.
For sure.

Seriously, we work 24/7! At least when we get jobs the bell rings at 3:00 and the day is over. I mean, we'll have to stay sometimes for staff meetings and preparing, but not like business jobs!

I'm going to try and teach 3rd grade math. I hate literacy, it's way too hard with all the documentation, rotations and small groups. Math is so much easier.

Yeah I don't know how these teachers do those rotating learning stations in reading. I guess they spend like the entire first week of school showing them how to do it. 

I want to teach at ---- elementary in Westlake, where the crazy rich people live. I'm hoping to student teach there, because then I'll pretty much get a job there and like, all the kids are smart so it shouldn't be too stressful.

I think you get stipends for being on committees! 

I'm NOT working on weekends...those teachers are nuts.

I hope I get a principal that doesn't like, come into your classroom all of the time. My cousin's principal does these walk-through things lately where they come in with no notice and watch her.

At least we'll be off all the time for like, every holiday, while everyone else is working! 

I think I want to teach kindergarten. I don't wanna mess with grades and report cards. Plus, they're SO cute! I think that would be a good grade to start in, because ya know, they're kindergarten so it's easier curriculum and everything. 

RTI sucks, I hope we don't ever have to deal with that stuff. 

Probably not, especially if we get into Northwest or Southlake. Those kids are smart!

Dear baby Jesus, thank you for my restraint throughout this conversation. :)