Thoughts on Green

So I have never considered myself to be a health nut or fitness guru or a tree hugger, but lately I find myself more and more drawn to living a healthier lifestlye and giving the enviornment a little slack. It probably all started a year ago when Ryan and I started recycling! After that I was hooked, and I have been altering my life stlye a little at a time to be more eco friendly and reading up on creative ways we can preserve our beautiful plant and our bodies. I never fully realized what a wasteful and sometimes toxic world we live in. We are bombarded with the idea that we must consume more as fast as we can. And when we take a look back at our society, we have grown into an obese, living in debt, unhappy people. Its kinda sad. Now not everyone is like this, but the growing trends of obesity, dieseases etc. is skyrocketing! Now I am not about to turn in my car keys, only buy organic and stop eating meat. For me and my family this is just not plausible. We do have to be realistic of our family situations, needs and what we can afford. But I have found there are several easy ways to be eco friendly that can be easily adopted in our busy lives, here is what I have done so far:

1. Started shopping with cloth bags! (Now I don't have a thousand plastic bags spilling out from under my sink!)
2. Switched all my lightbulbs in my house to halogen bulbs. These bulbs are inexpensive and will save you lots of $$$ come your next energy bill.
3. In conjunction with switching our light bulbs, we keep our heat at 64, which to some may seem quite chilly, but put on a sweater and I don't even notice it anymore, and keeps our power bill below $100.
4. Recycling!!! Man I can't believe how much of our trash can be recycled, it makes me feel soooo good to know that I am not being wasteful and something can be used again.
5. Switched our shower heads to water efficiency heads. You can buy these at walmart for like $10 - $20 dollars, and saves a ton of water!
6. Buy a Brita water pitcher or use the purifier on your fridge! Buy a great water bottle that you can use when your running errands or on the go. I have Camelback water botttles for Ryan and I and they are the BOMB! I never buy bottled water!!
7. When it comes to buying food, make sure that most of the food in your cart is whole foods and not processed food! As a society we eat way too much processed food and it is really affecting our health and metabolisms. Although I can't afford to buy everything organic, free-range and cage free, I can watch the ingredients on the food I do buy. I closely watch for hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and enriched flour products, they don't make it into my cart. I stick to whole fruits and veggies and whole wheat products and try to only have meat once or twice a week. Instead of ground beef I use ground turkey, so much healthier and can't really taste much of a difference.

Well, thats my two cents on healthy living, I don't know much and there is so much I have to learn to become more eco friendly, but my goal is to do the best I can with what I have right now in my life. There are many EASY and SIMPLE things we can do everyday to save a little energy and give our bodies some yummy and healthy food. Thanks for reading!