My family’s whole-food and fresh juicing lifestyle started five years ago and in those initial years it included a lot of ‘Superfoods’.
However, over the years the way we eat and drink has continuously changed and evolved – becoming simpler and simpler. And interestingly, yet not surprisingly, the longer we continue on this lifestyle course, the more positive results we see in our health.
A day in a whole-food, fresh juicing lifestyle
The majority of our food is made from scratch at home and we, without fail, have a daily fresh vegetable juice.
Many people tell me they would love to do what we do, but can’t afford it or haven’t the time. Having five years under my belt, I realise these reasons are another way of saying, “I’m not willing to make that commitment.”
A lifestyle, healthy or not, requires a commitment.
A growing commitment
The longer my family continues on this lifestyle journey, our commitment to it evolves alongside the changes we make. That is, the deeper into whole-foods and juicing we go, the deeper our commitment grows.
My husband and I no longer focus on the time taken to prepare a meal and a daily juice, or the amount it costs us financially (you still keep an eye on the weekly budget), but rather we are increasingly committed to how well we nourish our minds and bodies and that of our son.
Focus on health, not time and dollars
When my husband and I focused on the value of our family’s health, above the dollars and time invested, the benefits from our lifestyle really shifted gears. Because we have invested our energies into this way of living, it has become who we are and now we have become our lifestyle – healthy, simple living folk with little illness and an appreciation for the bigger picture. Our journey reminds me of the expression ‘Fake it, ’til you make it’. Just live a way for a while and eventually roots take hold and you become it.
Adult health starts in childhood
Studies show that adult health starts in childhood. So, in my mind, a healthy lifestyle for our son is a priority.
I have the evidence of my mother-in-law to confirm the science.
She is an amazing example of a physically robust adult, raised from a clean, whole-food diet as a child. She grew up on a farm in the formerly Yugoslavia where there was no use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides on their food. As a child she had daily duties to ensure the family had a meal on the table, including growing beans, milking goats, making bread and raising poultry. And each day she moved her body while doing her chores.
Her family didn’t consume processed foods or ‘SUPERFOODS’, they just ate what they could grow or swapped goods with other villagers as there were no shops nearby.
Today my mother-in-law is eighty-three years old with a fully functioning mind, wit and a weakness for treats. She goes to aqua aerobics three times a week and up until two years ago was a keen competition bocha player. She gets sick, but she recovers and in the family her nickname is ‘The Cockroach’ – as everyone says that nothing can knock her out. She was raised as a child on clean, whole-food and it has paid off in her adulthood and into old age.
My mother-in-law has shown me that expensive super-foods and fussy recipes have nothing to do with health. Her diet and lifestyle has been, and still is, simple. Although she does have a penchant for purchasing every juicing and blending gadget advertised on shopping channels.
The Garden of Life
Increasingly we try to grow produce in our juicing garden and I incorporate vegetables into a range of dishes, including sweet treats and where I can I use fruit or vegetables instead of starches and sweeteners. Our life is plant-based with meat, seafood, eggs and dairy included.
Recipes are important, and I have certainly searched the internet over the years for them as well. However now into living our fifth year as an organic, whole-food and fresh juice family I know that recipes are just a tiny part of the journey. The journey (as we all hear so often) is what is important. The journey changes you and that is where the real benefit is for your family’s health.
Superfoods?
Simple clean, whole food, including fresh vegetable juice, is the best superfood I know. However, each of these in isolation is not a cure-for-all, it is the combining of them in a lifestyle where the super results really show.
Happy juicing – juicingkids.com
Juicingkids.com helps parents and carers create life-long juicers out of their children.
As a child I stood at the juicer with my mother and now my son does the same with me. Experience has taught me how to start a child drinking fresh, raw nutrient dense vegetable juice and then keep them doing it as a daily habit.
In our home now we make a daily vegetable juices with a little low sugar fruit added for taste. Kids need parents and carers to to guide them lovingly through this over processed and hyper marketed world of foods to teach them how to love and nourish their bodies.
www.juicingkids.com
