As of Monday, February 1st, we started changing our diet and eating habits. First thing on the list is cutting out the trips to fast food restaurants and cutting out sugary drinks. No more Sweet Tea from McDonald's or cans and cans of Mountain Dew.

Since we have tried this diet thing before, and who hasn't, we decided to take a little different approach this time. In addition to wanting to lose weight, we want to eliminate the "hidden" dangers in our food as well. After watching Food, Inc., Supersize Me, and various other films related to food and its manufacturing processes, unhealthy eating habits, the general lack of good nutritious foods and the overabundance of unhealthy foods, we have come to realize a few very important points:

1. Attempting to make drastic, impulsive changes to our eating habits is futile: change needs to be deliberate, specific, and gradual. And planned. We've learned from experience that not planning our meals just leads to impulsive, carb heavy, fat heavy meals that lack fresh ingredients.

2. We will not be successful if we try to force ourselves to eat things we don't like, just because they are healthy; we need to find healthy foods we enjoy and use those to push out the bad ones.

3. Portion control is an issue. We got into the habit of eating out fairly often: restaurant portions in the US are grossly oversized. One thing we are doing now is sharing an entre instead of ordering two, on the fewer occassions that we go out. Portion control at home will start with reducing the amount we cook of the things that are less healthy, and supplementing those with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.

4. And speaking of eating out, it'll help not only with weight loss, but reduce $$ loss as well.

5. We will eat much smaller, more frequent meals, instead of skipping breakfast, eating a rushed lunch, and sitting down to a large dinner late in the evening. These alone are going to be the most challenging because they involve time constraints and require planning ahead. That's going to be a big challenge for me, as I never have more than a cup of coffee in the morning, and usually eat something fast (and usually unhealthy) for lunch. Now I'll have to get up earlier (UUUGH!!!) and do some preparing. I'll definitely need to work at this part.

6. We are learning a great deal about the food industry and the hidden dangers in mass-produced food products. Aside from the obvious abundance of preservatives and chemicals that we all know about and can't pronounce, recent books, articles and videos have started to illuminate things like how pervasive genetically modified foods are, how unhealthy (and other things) the meat and poultry industry can be, how foods are "engineered" to cause consumers to get "hooked" and over-consume them. There's so much more out there, so I'll be doing more research and posting.

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It's not just about "dieting", its about changing our habits and lifestyle in order to become healthier and more energetic. Its about delaying or preventing the onset of the most common illnesses in the US, which are directly attributable to overeating. And its about doing everything we can to ensure that our lives don't become the interlude between doctor's visits.....like so many older people we know. We aren't there yet, in age that is, but we've already noticed how we've slowed down and started feeling, well....rather crappy, over the last few years. And the most obvious reason is that we've both put on weight, and are less active. If we don't do something now, it will only get worse and more difficult to remedy.

So....here we go!