Welcome!

First off! Thanks for checking out my blog! This is my first real shot at blogging so I am excited and anxious to see how it goes. The idea for this blog is actually almost about a year in the making.

Starting around January last year, Kris and I both realized that we had put on a few pounds since the honeymoon in July. We joked about it at first and then realized that we needed to change something. We both decided (not as a New Year's Resolution) to start exercising and eating healthier. Easier said than done. How many of us have gone through this same thing? Wherever you are in life, I guarantee you have woken up one day, taken one good look in the mirror and wondered who had swallowed you in your sleep.

So . . . I started going to the gym and we started buying "healthier" at the store. This basically means we started buying things with words attached like "diet," "lite," "whole grain," "sugar free," "fat free," "1/2 the calories," etc. The health claims that food products make are endless. After a couple months of going to the gym and eating what we thought was relatively healthy, neither of us saw a huge improvement. Then, a show came on ABC called Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution:

The show was about a British chef named Jamie Oliver who came to America to help people eat better and have healthier lives. He started in the most unhealthy city in America, Huntington, West Virginia and then later went to LA. His mission was simple, he wanted to educate individuals, families, and schools how to cook better food. After watching his show, we were startled about all of the poor decisions we had been making in regards to the food we had been eating. As we came to find out, just because a food product makes a health claim, doesn't mean it's good for you to put into your body.

Once again, we started changing the way that we shopped and ate. We started cooking more at home using easy recipes from Jamie Oliver. We used more fresh ingredients and produce, and most importantly, we started reading the nutritional labels on what we bought. If there was one great trick we learned from Jamie it was this: If you can't pronounce or understand a fair amount of ingredients on the package, it's probably not good for your body.

The Food Revolution was what started it all, but we have continued to take it even further, always making adjustments to our eating habits. From buying books on nutrition to finding new recipes, we have completely revolutionized the way we eat. When Kris and I first moved to Illinois in July of 2010 as a young married couple with very little money, we were using coupons to buy the cheapest food possible regardless of the nutritional value. Now, we spend our money based on the nutrition of the foods we eat.

This blog is NOT about how to cut corners and make losing weight easy. Weight isn't really even what being healthy is about. Being healthy means exercising regularly and putting things into your body that are good for you. As 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 reminds us, our bodies are temples, we need to treat them right. The premise of The Tummy Temple is that God created so many different kinds of good food for us to eat! He filled the planet with them! Unfortunately, in America we take many of these "living foods" and process them until they lose most of their nutritional value and turn them into "dead foods" (Dr. Don Colbert). Food can be healthy and tasty at the same time!

When I look at the Fast Food Nation in which we live and how childhood diabetes is higher than it's ever been, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that we are not eating the way that God originally wanted us to eat. God does not want us to be skinny, he wants us to be healthy, and that is what I am continually going to stress in this blog. When you put things into your body to boost your immune system, or increase your memory, or help prevent cancer you can feel great about the way that you look on the outside regardless of your body type. You can be confident knowing that you are taking care of God's temple well!

I know I don't have all of the answers and that is why I am hoping to be candid with all of you as I take this journey with my husband. I am going to tell you what we are doing and why we are doing it. I will probably be wrong from time to time but this is a HUGE learning experience for me as well. I hope that in reading my blog you may get inspired to change some of your eating habits and get new ideas you haven't thought of before. Even if you just become more conscious of what you are eating, I will consider this blog a success. So grab yourself a fork, knife, and spoon and let's start eating together!