Hi, I'm Summer Harms! (and this is my family - cue slide with our pictures on it) I get to talk to you about food today. Which I’m really excited about because I love food (obviously) and I love to cook and feeding my family is one of the biggest ways I show them that I love them. I was asked to speak about making healthy choices today, and was having such a hard time trying to nail down a particular topic under this umbrella. I just love it all! Then Grant suggested making a list of the 10 most practical, important things that we’ve learned or that I try to do for my family when it comes to food. I thought this was brilliant. I know I love hearing how other families get through 3 meals a day, so here's how we are doing it. Eating healthy is a lifestyle. And lifestyles are built on little things - the choices we make throughout the day and small changes here and there. So these are some of those little things that have helped our family, or that we’ve learned along the way as we try to be healthier eaters. I share these things not as an expert, just straight from our family’s experience, with the hope that there might be something in the mix that’s helpful to you. 

1. If there’s junk in the house, we’ll eat it. So we don’t have junk in the house. Grant helps me with this one a lot because I’m easily tempted at the grocery store and he sticks to the list. We don’t buy much snack stuff at the store because we know we can make our own snacks and treats at home. That way we know exactly what’s going into our bodies and get the most nutrients out of our snacks. (Our favorites are homemade popcorn, bananas or apple slices and nut butter, pickles, nuts, chips and guacamole, homemade muffins or cookies, or trail mix.)

2. Fats are good. And use the good fats. Our brain is 60% fat and the fats we eat strongly influence our levels of brain function, as well as cellular health. Most processed foods contain the harmful kinds of fats, while healthy types of saturated fats provide a major source of energy, the building blocks for cell membranes, vital hormones, and they help your body absorb important vitamins, including A, D, and E. Coconut oil is our favorite for cooking and baking and we love olive oil for dressings and marinades. Just a few other good-for-you fats that we like are avocados, eggs from pastured hens, and grass fed meats. I know from experience that I feel a lot better when I’m eating enough good fats. When we first started eating less processed foods and having a lot more healthy saturated fat (specifically coconut oil), I noticed that I had more energy and better mental clarity, and felt more full and satisfied for a longer time after a meal. 

3. Take a good probiotic and fermented food. Gut health is something that has been a really big deal for our family, because we’ve experienced tremendous health recovery benefits by focusing on cultivating good bacteria and forcing harmful bacteria out. You can tilt your balance toward the good bacteria simply by eating more of them, in the form of probiotics, which are live bacteria contained in foods and supplements. We take a strong probiotic supplement and also eat probiotic-rich fermented foods like sauerkraut and pickles and kombucha in order to boost the beneficial bacteria in our guts. 

4. Say no to sugar. This is another big one that has dramatically improved how I feel in terms of overall wellness. We’ve learned to stop when we’ve had too much sugar, and try to view it as a treat. We also like to use sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar, or even just fruit to make things sweet, instead of using sugar. These alternatives are real foods found in nature that actually contain health-giving properties, where as sugar is so ultra processed that it is stripped of any nutrients. Not only that, but it’s extremely addicting, and it feeds the bad bacteria that live in our gut. 

5. Be prepared. Have a plan for dinner- whatever that looks like at your house. At our house, we often have meat thawing in the fridge for tomorrow night’s dinner. When 5:30 rolls around, if there’s not a plan in place, it’s just way too easy to start eating whatever you can find fast. Don’t wait until you’re starving. Also, bringing snacks with you wherever you go has been a big help to us. If we have enough food with us to get by until we get home, we can avoid the drive-thru. 

6. Quality foods. We love to know where our food is coming from. We buy organic produce whenever we can, we love to hit the farmers market as much as possible, and we switched to buying local grass-fed beef without hormones or antibiotics. 

7. Don’t give up on something- and when in doubt, roast it. 

A few years ago I found out that if I cut back on sugar, everything else started tasting better. Before that time, my tastebuds were so trained and dependent on sugar for flavor that I was a really picky eater. I didn’t even realize it at the time, but as my sugar dependency went down, I was so encouraged, because suddenly I started liking so many new things! And now it’s hard for me to find a vegetable that I don’t like- especially when it’s roasted. Roasted vegetables are the big favorite at our house. So if there’s a food or meal that you haven’t liked in the past, I want to encourage you: don’t give up on it. Try preparing it a few different ways- you never know if you’ll find a new favorite. For us, that was the case with brussels sprouts. We tried roasting them one night and now we can’t get enough of them!! 

8. Read labels as you shop. If you can’t pronounce the ingredients, you should probably put it back. For me a “proper diet” means eating real food... wholesome, nutrient-dense foods that come from nature. The longer an ingredient list gets, the more likely it is to have undesirable stuff and the less likely it is to be nutrient rich. We try to buy things with as few ingredients as possible or single-ingredient food items like eggs, rice, apples, avocados, etc. 

9. Make meals that stretch.  If you make dinner big enough, you can use it for lunch the next day. This one is kind of just common sense, but we just put it into practice this past school year and it made a huge difference. At my house, especially on week days, lunch often ends up being a scavenging kind of meal, unless there is something already made. Which is why having leftovers is perfect - it doesn’t get much easier than that. And planning one big meal always beats planning 2. 

10. Have the right mindset. Know why you want to eat healthy. A healthy mindset about eating is just as important as the food you are choosing to eat - because eating matters to the Lord. Our motivation for eating well can be found right in 1 Corinthians 6:20: ”You have a body, but it is not yours. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 

I loved this quote from John Piper that I found the other day about Worshipping Christ through eating.

-Don’t think worship services when you think worship. That is a huge limitation which is not in the Bible. All of life is supposed to be worship. Take breakfast, for example, or midmorning snacks. 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Now eating and drinking are about as basic as you get. What could be more real and human?” You are always in a temple. Always worship. -John Piper

-What does worship look like when it comes to eating? It means getting the proper diet your body was designed by God to have. This is how we applaud and enjoy His design and understand that He made us stewards of these bodies. We honor Him when we take care of our bodies!

photo cred: a life lived well, camille styles flower bouquet

One sunny September morning, in the fall of 2008, a young bride woke up in her new (old, tiny, quirky) apartment. The young bride was me. A blonder, less foodie-fanatic version of me. After breakfast (probably a bowl of sugar cereal), I sat at our old iMac computer googling Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products. I was new in town, a rookie homemaker, and newly moved far-far-away from the place that has all the answers, aka, Target. I didn't really know where you find things outside of Target, or which store in our teeny town would carry Mrs. Meyer's, but maybe I could find it online somewhere. My recently acquired cleaning responsibilities in my very own home were thrilling to me and I was ready to take them seriously. Dreams of a fully stocked cleaning bucket danced in my head.

I clicked on the next link on the google results page, not knowing that it would lead me to a land sparkling with possibilities. On the other end of that link was... a blog. It was this very post in fact:


I don't know if I had ever truly seen and read a real live blog before that morning. But what I saw, I loved. I wanted in. It was a blog meant for someone like me, talking about things I was interested in or soon would be. I made plans to come back the next morning to read more. She promised pretty things updated daily, which sounded like an invitation. Count me in. Jordan Ferney's space (which had a different design back then) was neat, clean, and smart. I loved how she shared tidbits from her life and experience as she listed out things she liked. It had everything necessary to captivate and convince me that starting my own blog was not only essential, it was overdue. Time was wasting and creating a blog became the day's priority.

I think I had my little bend in the blog world set up by the time Grant came home from work that day. When he sat down at his desk I proudly announced, "Well, I started a blog today." And he probably said something like, "Really? What are you going to write about?"

Good question, Grant. I'm still figuring that one out day by day.

ps. It's funny how my relationship with blogs has morphed over the years, from being a faithful drop-in to a regular reader to making friends in the comment box to Google Reader to a handful of favorite must-reads. Nowadays, my blog reading time is much shorter and my comment voice has been reduced to a whisper. But I'm happy with all of that, and glad for the things I've gleaned from blogging and reading blogs over the years. 

You should play along too! And come follow me on instagram @summerharms