This Real Food Story comes from Cooking With CSA’S very own Peter Hagstrom…
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When I think of my Real Food Story, I think back to when I radically changed my diet.
It felt like the worst possible time to do so – I was working 50hrs/week and was training for my first marathon – but eliminating processed foods and only eating meals made with real ingredients just felt like the right thing to do.
I practically made the switch over-night. One day I was Peter, the next day I was a crazy whole-food hippie.
I was working construction, and got all kinds of crap from the guys. Green smoothie for breakfast, oatmeal for a snack and family-size salad for lunch. What’s the big deal?
It was a real challenge. For months I had the same schedule, week after week.
I would wake up at 5am, make oatmeal, blend a smoothie and pack my lunch. After work I’d grocery shop, go home, run 5-8 miles in the dark with a headlamp, make dinner, make salad and dressing for the next 3 days, put the left-overs in a tupperware for lunch the next day, shower, go to sleep by 11pm, wake up and do it all again.
The best part was realizing that cooking was getting easier and easier. Compared to everyone else I knew, I was cooking A LOT. But after a while it didn’t seem like much.
After a few months, I started to understand how eating this way wasn’t a change in diet, but a change in lifestyle. I now had a different relationship with food. I knew what I was eating, and why I was eating it.
In the first 3 months of eating clean I lost 20lbs…
I can safely say that learning to cook my own food was the smartest thing I could have done for my health. It’s also lead to some of the most rewarding things I’ve accomplished in life.
When we say “happy cooking”, we mean it! :)
