Mama Gone Green is a blog dedicated to raising happy children and reducing our impact on the Earth. My name is Taryn and I am the mother of 2 young kids and an environmental studies instructor at a community college in Portland, Oregon. Please join me as I journey through life as a mama, teacher, knitter, photographer, gardener, and environmentalist!

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

A Spring Cleanse


For months I have been talking about doing a cleanse, but kept putting it off for one reason or another. I finally decided it was time to commit and chose this week to begin my cleanse. My cleanse is 5 days of: no gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol, or anything processed, with green juice every morning,  followed by 5 more days of no gluten. It's pretty short, I realize, but hey- I am trying to be realistic here.
Really, this is how I should be eating most of the time. Lots of fruits and veggies with some whole grains mixed in. And in reality, I do eat like this plenty of the time... Usually our dinners are very healthy and breakfast on most days is as well. The times when I turn to bread, cereal, or cheese and crackers are times when I am busy, exhausted and starving, and just need something to eat quickly. Which happens more frequently than I would like to admit....
So far, this is only day 3 of my cleanse, and I am feeling good, but I also feel like I have spent so much time preparing food. Making a quinoa salad and beet salad so that I could have easy lunches after coming home from work; prepping veggies for juice in the morning when I leave the house at 6:30 and also have to pack lunches, shower and get kids ready for school; Making veggie sushi rolls for a quick and easy snack; crockpotting beans for dinner; and making muffins so the kids had something they would eat for breakfast (because they want no part in my green juice and sauteed veggies in the morning). This along with all of my other, regular food prep. And this has only gotten us through a couple of days.
So, my point? I am happy to be cleansing and I wish I could eat like this all of the time. But, I feel like I would need to hire a chef, sleep less, or get much better at my time management skills. I think part of it is making it a routine, and, I think I can try and keep that in mind for the future. Maybe cooking healthy food for my lunches once or twice a week can become part of the routine, and keeping veggies already cut up to snack on would be wise as well.
How do you manage to eat healthy when your schedule is busy?

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3 comments:

  1. Go you! I've been on a tidying up my eating habits journey for over a month along with more exercise-I am quite proud of myself. I wish I had a magic idea to help you, but for me with no littles around I have enough time. Maybe do all the cooking a prep work on a weekend (cooking vast amount of grains, legumes) so you only have a vegetable chopping? I'll check back to see what others say :)

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  2. sounds horrible :) just kidding. only the alcohol part.

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  3. Good for you! I think you are right about the routine part, once it becomes a habit, and you feel the benefits, it is much easier to keep it up. Keep in mind this is coming from a stay at home mom...I often wonder how your working mamas do it :)

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