28 days... Why is it so hard to eat healthy??

I've been eating lean for over 2 weeks now... loading up on healthy food, especially good carbs and lots of lean protein to make sure that I don't lose lean muscle mass as I am training and dieting down to show off my muscles on stage. It has been a VERY eye-opening experience into how expensive or difficult it can be to get healthy food in our mass market, convenience, price and speed above all society!

I was prepared for the fact that our grocery bill would jump and it did by at least forty dollars a week. I knew that I'd have to make careful choices if we ate out, but what I began to notice is how cheaply you can buy food that is so terrible for you! Most places offer a burger, fries and a soft drink for less than four dollars, while healthy meals cost at least six to eight dollars! Healthy food, such as salads, at fast-food restaurants is often wilted, past its freshest, or too easy to hide under heavy calorie dressings and cheese that take it into a high calorie choice.

The final straw hit me tonight when Nick was checking out the airline site to find out the weight restrictions and discovered pictures of the morning and afternoon snacks that are offered on the plane. Both were so hideously bad for you that they almost made me want to gag! Chips, pepperoni sticks, candy, packaged danishes... Yuck!!

If we want to change our society to one where eating healthy is not only for the wealthy, then we need to take a good hard look at the fact that the food we need to eat to stay alive is big business to many companies. WE are the consumers!! We need to speak up and ask for better choices or healthier alternatives... We need to start slowing down to actually prepare meals from basic ingredients and savour eating them instead of gulping them down to get to somewhere else... We need to value the bodies that we have and take pride in how we care for them...

If not, then it really is all about what is cheap, fast and easy.