June 8, 2009 Low-Carb Menu

10:00AM
5 local farm eggs cooked in butter with Colby Jack cheese and tomatoes
Cherry Coke Zero



4:30PM
2 half-pound grass-fed beef hamburger patties with Colby Jack cheese, tomatoes, and mayo
Diet Coke with Splenda

8:00PM
2-hour recreational volleyball

NOTE: When you switch over to higher-quality food than you have been accustomed to eating, it's amazing how much of a difference there really is not just in the health properties but also in how they taste and make you feel. I remember when I first went on the Atkins diet in January 2004 how eating foods like steak, fresh vegetables, full-fat cheese and cream, and even the low-carb/sugar-free chocolates and products was such a far superior jump upward in terms of the quality of foods I had been consuming in the years prior to that like fast food, big plates of pasta, potato chips, doughnuts, sugary snack cakes, Coca-Cola--PURE CARBAGE! Just the thought of consuming foods like that now is quite repulsive.

I was reminded of how prevalent those junk foods are in our society today when I walked into my local grocery store to pick up a Chicken BLT salad for Christine (her favorite!) and there was a huge display at the front door for Little Debbie Snack Cakes on sale for 88 cents a box. Back in the day, I would load up my grocery basket with at least ten boxes of these, including the Swiss Miss Rolls, Oatmeal Cookies with cream, and Fudge Rounds. After refrigerating them to firm up the texture of the snack cakes, I'd pull 'em out one box at a time to eat the WHOLE box! Seeing that display just evoked all the emotions of how the pre-2004 Jimmy Moore used to eat so very poorly contrasted with my menus today--I'm eating better than I have in my entire life! You just can't fully comprehend what that's like until you live it yourself.

Today as I was eating the eggs for breakfast from a local farmer from my church and then some grass-fed beef in the afternoon from another local distributor, it struck me how much better these foods are than the kind you can buy at Wal-Mart or your local grocery store. There are some really compelling reasons for switching to these better food choices and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either ignorant or ill-informed. Even if all you got from consuming these foods was more omega-3 fatty acids to help counterbalance the overabundance of omega-6s in your diet (and you do!), then you would be better off than 99% of the rest of the population.

Sure, local free-range eggs and grass-fed beef can tend to be a little more expensive than what you find in the grocery store. But the thing to remember is you always get what you paid for. Those 88-cent boxes of Little Debbie Snack Cakes are certainly more affordable than buying a head of cauliflower, broccoli, or spaghetti squash. And yet the negative impact those boxes of "rat poison" will wreak havoc on your weight and health makes the few pennies you save now on your food bill seem silly. Your body is worth the extra investment to get the good stuff it needs so you can live the long, happy, and healthy life that you DESERVE! Once you start eating these better quality foods, you'll never go back to those old foods again.

By the way, after I was finished doing puppets for the 3 and 4-year olds at VBS tonight (and they didn't listen very well today either!), I went to play volleyball for a couple of hours and that sore toe on my left foot did fine. I could pivot and run without any pain and the swelling finally subsided. It doesn't look like the toe is broken, but it certainly hurt like the dickens for several days. Although I was tentative about playing at first, it felt wonderful getting in some stress-relieving, fun exercise at the end of a fantastic day of healthy eating. Livin' la vida low-carb is one amazing way to live!