Eating In Balance

The name of my blog is "The Balance of Living a Handmade and Natural Life".  I'm not quite sure that I have been finding myself feeling very balanced lately, especially when it comes to eating.  My husband and i decided to move towards a vegan diet after his doctor and dietician recommended it for certain health issues and after some research about some family history on my part.  When the weather was cold, and here in New England it was raw and cold for what seemed like forever, I felt like it was easy.  Beans became a stable of our diet.  Of course the kisd hated this type of diet so we started to switch back to meat for the kids.  Then finally, the nice weather came and we started to cook on the grill.  I have now moved back into the meat eating, dairy loving person that I was before we made our diet change.  The problem?- I don't feel as good when I eat that way.  I love the taste, but I tend to over eat, I feel horrible after and the cycle continues.

How do I plan on fixing this problem?  Well, I have to say I feel more balanced when I eat a more vegan style diet.  I do enjoy it, and when I don't have a lot of meat, I tend not to miss it.  For me meat really ahs to be a once in a while thing or else I go over board.  My biggest problem is summer.  Now that the heat is here and that means BBQ season, ice and beans and roasted veggies don't really cut it.  I know I can roast veggies on the grill, and even fruit and I can eat lots of salad, but how do I make it filling and satisfying like when I eat beans and veggies soups?  One of the things that I am looking into, is the raw foods diet.  Again, balance, as this would really be for summer and really warm weather when you don't want to eat heavy.

Will I be able to enjoy a raw food diet?  That is the question that I keep asking myself.  For lunch i made my husband and I a green smoothie.  I really like them, but they tend not to hold me as long as other food, but I don't over eat with a green smoothie.  I think I just need to have a snack plan for when I get hungry (something healthy and satisfying). 

I am always striving for a balanced life, it just tends to be one of those things that I will constantly need to work on.

Today's "Green Smoothie " recipe:

2 bananas
1 apple
handful of green grapes
1 C frozen berries
a bunch of green swiss chard
water to blend

Blend all of the fruit together then add the swiss chard and blend until smooth adding water if needed.  Almost any green leafy veggie can be used.  Yesterday we had a variation using Red Russian Kale from our garden.  We're hoping to get some more leafy green growing so that we can have more smoothies and use things from our garden.  I would love to use more local fruits and hopefully I will be able to change that!

Amy