3 Things You Can Do that have a BIG Impact on Your Health

We have all been stuffing ourselves with turkey for the last 4 days and enjoying the gifts God has blessed us with.

If you are ready to recover from the Thanksgiving eating binge, I have a few tips that get you blasted onto a super healthy road.

Staying healthy isn’t that hard, and today I wanted to share three SMALL things you can do that will have a BIG impact.

Here are 3 Things You can do to get Healthier this Week:

1. Eat Real Food
2. Start Juicing
3. Get a Grain Mill

# 1 Way to Get Healthier This Week:  Eat Real Food

I’ve been eating this way for YEARS.  I don’t diet.  I don’t avoid fat.  I don’t avoid carbs.  I don’t count calories or points.

I call it the “Farmer’s Diet” because if you are eating anything a farmer can raise on his farm, you are eating real food.

Nothing is off-limits.  Bacon, pork, lard, steak, whole cream, butter, real milk, veggies.  On our farm we raise almost everything we eat.  I have grown very comfortable eating this way and never feel deprived.

The hardest part is getting off the sugar, because, most of us are addicted to it.  When I began the adventure of producing all of my food, I gave up sugar, because, I don’t grow sugar.  I use maple syrup as my main sweetener (yes, we can tap maple trees for the real stuff).

If you can commit to eating ONLY real foods you will probably be impressed with the impact it will have.

What are real foods?  

That’s easy – real foods are foods without ingredients… like these:

• Eggs
• Wheat berries
• Butter
• Cream
• Milk
• Nuts
• All Fruits
• All veggies
• All Herbs
• Maple Syrup
• Honey
• All roots (potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, etc)
• All meat
• Many raw cheeses have only milk & an acid

This list is not near complete – it’s just a quick list to get you thinking about what you CAN eat if you are on a whole food plan.

#2 Way to Get Healthier This Week:  Buy a Juicer

I have been juicing for years.  It is one of the best ways to change the trajectory of your health.  In general, Americans do not eat enough living foods.  We don’t consume many fresh (local, ripe, unprocessed) fruit and vegetables.  Fresh, living foods are packed with nutrients and antioxidants.  They heal, repair and keep our bodies healthy.  Unfortunately, most of the vegetables consumed in America are overcooked, processed or tampered with in some way.

Juicing is a simple way to get tons of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables into your diet.

I learned about the benefits of juicing several years before I bought one.  I wanted to believe that I could feed my body all the nutrients it needed by EATING whole fresh fruits and veggies.

The truth was that I never managed to eat enough of these vital foods each day.

After reading book after book proclaiming the miracle of juicing I finally joined the team.  One of the books that really rocked me was Life, Cancer & God.  In this book, the author tells how she beat advanced-stage cancer.  Her approach included her faith, healthy living choices and LOTS of juicing.

Even if you are perfectly well, juicing is a great addition to a healthy lifestyle.

1.  Juicing May Replace your Daily Multi-Vitamin – When fruits and vegetables are juiced, the cell wall of those foods are opened to release all the nutrients inside.  This makes amino acids, chlorophyll, enzymes, minerals and vitamins available for fast absorption by the body once the juice is consumed.
2. Freshly made juices are the King of all foods.  The nutritional value of freshly made juice can not be reproduced or manufactured and put into a pill.  There is no other food that can be absorbed and used as quickly by the body.  Because juice does not need to be digested, it is readily available and absorbed almost immediately by the body.
3. Juicing is a nutrition-packed shot to the body.  Because juicing removes the fiber and pulp from the fruits and vegetables you can consume much more volume of these foods.
4. Juicing will allow you to consume a wider variety of foods.  With juicing I consume limes, lemons, cucumbers, celery, ginger root and many other fresh foods that I would otherwise never eat.
5. Juicing is the fountain of youth.  New research actually indicates that antioxidants (like the ones found in fresh juice) slow aging, promote endurance and improve mental function.  [Jacobs, Carole.  The Everything Juicing Book.  Adams Media.  2010]
6. Juicing allows you to consume more fruits and vegetables.  Different experts have different recommendations for the number of fresh fruits and vegetables we should consume each day.  For heart health and disease prevention, the quota is steep.  I don’t know what the right amount of fruits and vegetables is, but I know that with juicing I easily consume over 15 servings a day.

I know that a juicer is an investment.  You don’t need to spend a bunch of money to start juicing.   Any juicer will provide healthy juice for you to drink.

To see the juicer I have go here.  I have a masticating juicer.  A masticating version is much better, but if you only have money for the centrifugal style- get it.  It is better than no juicer at all. The Walmart near me sells this one for about $50.  I will say that I’ve cleaned several juicers and the masticating is the fastest and easiest to clean.

go here to read more about juicing.

#3 Way to Get Healthier This Week: Invest in a Home Grain Mill

I’ve been grinding wheat into flour and baking with it since 2004.  It is as easy as grinding up coffee beans but much more nutritious.

I have a NutriMill and I love it.  It is small (kinda).  It is easy to use.

There are several reasons to mill your own wheat, actually, there are 40.

Fresh milled wheat berries contain 40 of the 44 essential nutrients (that come from food) needed to sustain life.

The Truth About Store-Bought Flour

Did you hear that?  Forty of the Forty-four essential nutrients needed to sustain life are found in fresh-milled wheat.

If you didn’t change anything else in your diet, adding fresh-milled wheat would be a game-changer.

When you cook with fresh-milled flour, it literally converts all of your baked goods into superfoods-

• Bread, buns, rolls
• pizza crust
• cinnamon rolls
• cinnamon raisin bread
• muffins, pancakes
• even desserts!  Just think how healthy your cookies and cakes will be!

Freshly milled flour is different than the flour sold in stores.  When I grind my own wheat I am eating the germ, endosperm, bran and the hull.

“Grains are the seed-bearing fruits of grasses. The fact that grains are the seeds of the plant, as well as the fruit, that life-giving nutrient, are contained and perfectly stored within, make grains an incredibly nutritious food. In fact, of the 44 known essential nutrients needed by our bodies and naturally obtained from foods, only 4 are missing from wheat–vitamin A, B_12, and C, and the mineral iodine.” – Sue Becker (Source)

“Whole wheat” flour or bread from the store is not the same.

1. Storebought flour contains very little “whole grain”  The truth is, store-bought flour is not whole grain (“The majority of what is marketed in the USA under the name “wheat bread” has very little whole grain content and is made primarily of white flour, with caramel coloring added to them to give an illusion of a higher whole wheat content.)^{[3]” Source}
   
2. Flour from the store has the bran and germ removed.  In order to prolong the shelf life of flour sold in stores, they remove the bran and germ.  This prevents the flour from going rancid on the shelves, but it also removes most of the nutritional value (the bran and germ is the portion of the wheat kernel that contains the bulk of the nutrition).
3. Flour from the store has been sitting on a shelf.  When wheat is ground into flour it begins to oxidize immediately.  In as few as 3 days that flour is almost void of all nutrition.  In order to preserve the 40 nutrients, flour must be baked into bread (or other baked good) or stored in the freezer to slow oxidation.

Much of America is avoiding gluten these days, and when we cut out gluten, we can also inadvertently remove fiber.  Fiber is so important to a healthy life. Introducing fresh-milled wheat into your diet will do more than give you an injection of vitamins and nutrients it will bring back the fiber your body needs.

Fiber is a crucial part of our diet that has been pushed to the side in recent years.

1. Fiber promotes Regularity – whether you don’t go to the bathroom enough or you go too much, fiber regulates.
2. Sweeping effect – the fresh fiber actually acts like a broom and sweeps in insides of your system.
3. Eliminating – when we make poor food choices, fiber from fresh-milled bread flushes any regrets out of our systems and in the septic tank in no time.

And homemade bread made with fresh-milled wheat is probably the best bread you will ever taste.  It is super soft, slightly sweet and delicious.  I’ve never eaten bread from a store that tastes like my homemade bread.

I’ve been grinding things for over a decade, so I don’t think much about it anymore.  If we want pasta, we grind some flour.  If we want pizza crust, we grind some flour.  If we want muffins, we grind some flour.  Bagged flour may be a little easier, but the health benefits are worth it for me to grind my own flour.

Want to learn more about making your own bread with freshly milled flour?

We have a membership community for folks just like you!  There are dozens of bread recipes specifically created for freshly milled flour.  The Membership includes breadmaking instructions, articles, how to buy wheat grain and a 9 video course on breadmaking.  It is perfect for anyone interested in grinding wheat and making bread.  Learn more HERE.

If you are not yet following along – you should!  Sign up here to get all the latest updates, drama, and homesteading fun.

XO,

Candi