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Eat Real Food

Eat Real Food

Lisa Eirene

About Lisa Eirene Lisa lost 110 pounds through calorie counting and exercise. She swims, bikes, runs, hikes and is enjoying life in Portland, Oregon. Her weight loss story has been featured in First Magazine, Yahoo Health, Woman's Day and Glamour.com.

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17 Comments

  1. Beth @ Beth's Journey

    I used to eat just like you – all packaged stuff. In fact, I was scared to eat unpacked stuff because I had no idea of the nutritional content. Crazy how that works!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      YES! I was so scared to eat “real” food because I didn’t know how many calories/servings I was eating. Boy how things have changed!

  2. Jill

    We eat very little processed food… “now”. But before I started my journey that is ALL we ate. Mostly for the convenience of it. I just wrote a post about needing to shop for gluten free foods and realized that clean eating was mostly gluten free. I realized this after we had a cart full of sugar filled, fat filled gluten free “substitutions”.

    I feel so much better when I eat clean. More energy. Less headaches. Clothes fit better!! 🙂

    1. Lisa Eirene

      It’s hard finding things that are “free” of something that AREN’T packed with substitutes and sugar. I’ve never tried to go gluten free but friends that have struggled to find stuff they could eat. I know it was a challenge for me to go low-carb. There’s carbs in everything.

      That’s great that your headaches have improved!

  3. Amanda

    I still eat it occasionally, but I always feel gross afterwards. I’d say I’m at about 78% real and 22% processed. It’s a process. I’ve come a long way.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      You hit the nail on the head–I just feel GROSS when I eat highly processed foods now. Although it’s hard to go completely processed-free. Like we buy bread and condiments–all processed. I think your percentages are pretty close to ours too.

  4. Mary (A Merry Life)

    I just posted that image on my facebook wall earlier – it’s so awesome!

    I don’t eat a ton of processed foods. I try to cook as much as I can or at least rely on healthier convenience foods like bags of steamed whole veggies. When I started my full time job a few months ago I tried eating frozen meals because that’s what my coworkers do and I got through 3 before I was sick of them. I hate stuff like that!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      My friend found it a few weeks ago and I loved it. I had to write a post about it!

      I ate the frozen meals for lunch for a long time too but I just FEEL BETTER eating real food!!

  5. Lisa

    What a great post! I try to avoid processed foods as much as I can!

  6. Tina @ Faith Fitness Fun

    I define processed food of anything “faked up” with chemicals, additives, etc. Because in reality even things like yogurt are technically processed. But an organic greek yogurt with simply the yogurt and some fruit mixed in isn’t processed to me. Yoplaits with extra artificial sweeteners and coloring would be processed.

    With that said, I think I keep a pretty good base of getting my meals from 3/4 unprocessed in my use of the word. It deifnitely used to be more though because (like you) I feared not knowing the calorie count of things.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I think those Yoplait yogurts are just candy. There’s so much sugar in them! I eat the organic Greek yogurt–plain! With a little fresh fruit in it. There are definitely “processed” things I do eat and will not eliminate from my diet (sour cream, greek yogurt, ice cream, condiments) but limiting my processed food intake to just those things makes me feel better.

  7. Esther

    I’m curious…why no unsweetened iced tea?

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Must be a typo, I do drink unsweetened iced tea…

      1. Esther

        It was this line, that I might have read it wrong: ” No sodas, even diet, unsweetened iced tea, no juice.”

        I just couldn’t figure out why it would be bad to drink unsweetened iced tea.

  8. Katie Squires

    About half way to loosing 100 pounds I hit a plateau, and I spoke to a trainer at the gym…she asked what I was doing…I proudly told her how I worked out 5-6 days a week…then she asked about FOOD…and I again proudly told her about all the “healthy” low cal diet BLUE MENU food I ate…she looked at me and shook her head. That’s when I was introduced to eating WHOLE REAL food…did it ever CHANGE my body! the rest of that weight came off much faster, and I eat MORE, and I feel better too. I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen cooking, REAL food 🙂 Cooking and baking with my kids and it feels so very good. It makes me feel WHOLEsome feeding my family this way.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      What a compelling story! Isn’t it funny how we ignore something as SIMPLE as food? I did the same thing. I thought I was eating so healthy…but in reality, I wasn’t. I was eating diet food and chemicals. The food component is even more important than the exercise part, I think.

      Thanks for sharing your story! I’d love to hear more about what you and your kids cook.

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