Unintentional Weight Loss

As I've already written, our family is trying to make better food choices. I read in Skinny Chicks Eat Real Food about the different processes that are involved in the manufacturing of packaged foods and I was totally turned off of breakfast cereal. Aside from being full of sugar (which I already knew and had resigned myself to), the manufacturing process actually strips the cereal of any nutritional value that was left (or added, by way of supplement). So we are eating the equivalent of sugary cardboard when we eat our Honey Nut Cheerios.

Well, no longer! I knew we needed more fibre and I knew that breakfast cereal wasn't the healthiest option, so it was pretty easy to switch to Loaded Oatmeal for breakfast. Since mid-May we have been eating oatmeal for breakfast. For every serving, I cook 1/2 cup rolled oats with 1 Tbsp ground flax seed, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and 1 cup water over the stove. I usually add a handful of frozen blueberries for each serving as well. Sometimes we add maple syrup. Sometimes we don't.

With our better breakfast choices, we've noticed changes... The kids have fewer tummy aches (thank you fibre!), we're all nice and regular (thank you fibre!), and my hubby and I have actually lost weight! Weight loss was not our main goal. We really just wanted to be eating foods closer to what our bodies were designed to use. We wanted to let our bodies work properly so we could have better overall health. Like a car that works well when it's been tuned up or a computer that runs quicker when it's been defragmented and cleaned up, our bodies can heal and hold off diseases better when we're letting our systems work efficiently.

A few days ago, my husband commented that he was five pounds down from the high end of his weight spectrum. (We all fluctuate in our weight, and he noticed he was consistently on the low end recently.) I told him it was likely due to all the renovations and extra exercise he's been getting. (I mean, come on... When you eat three scoops of ice cream as a bed time snack every night, you're not really going to lose weight, right?)

Getting dressed one morning recently, he told me that he had to use a hole on his belt loop that he hadn't used in many years.

This morning he told that he was down another five pounds.

He has dropped ten pounds without trying. We aren't eating refined white flour or sugar as much as before, but we also aren't counting calories or doing big workouts. We eat good, healthy food that has gone through minimal factory processing when we're hungry.

I haven't gone down ten pounds like he has, but I am lower on the scale than I have been in about three years. Again, it's not about the weight. It's about being healthier. But, I think the scale is telling us that our body is finally feeling free to get rid of some of the extra bulk that we didn't really need.

As one friend has told me, we don't even realize how awful we feel until our bodies finally start to feel better consistently. I'm curious to hear from others... Have you made any simple, easy changes to your eating habits that have made a noticeable difference in how you feel or how your body operates?