Epidemic Today: Momma, You Don’t Eat Enough

This topic is a close one to my heart because there’s so much wrapped up inside it. We live in a culture today that honors thinness or the skinny. One popular weight-loss program actually used the phrase nothing tastes as good as skinny feels as their motto slapped on a refrigerator magnet. Only intention there, no irony. Women who are thin have more value in modern society. Is it actually true? It absolutely is not, but that is still what is emphasized. So from the time women are young girls they are are set up to be extremely body conscious. Many hear their mothers complain in the background how they still need to lose a few pounds, that they are fat, or she is on the next fad diet. Magazine covers at the grocery store checkout are full of women in size zero dresses caked with makeup on their faces and that’s what we are told is beautiful. Salads and green smoothies are pushed as the healthy choices, meanwhile women are walking around bloated and hungry.

As someone who has dealt with disordered eating patterns since age 12 and fought past them, I can tell you this current world is not built for a healthy mind or body. As I attend church events, school field trips, and even family gatherings I have observed one common theme, women, especially mothers, do not eat enough. It is mind boggling to me that mothers who hold one of the most important positions in the entire world are not fed well. Mothers wear the hat of nurse, doctor, chef, chauffeur, housekeeper, childcare worker, engineer, seamstress, manager, accountant, personal shopper, educator, and you name it, yet she often runs on caffeine and left over carbs from her toddler’s snack. I am here to tell you that it’s not cute, funny, or a mom’s life. Mother’s are a fierce force to be reckoned with who need to be nourished.

Motherhood is not given the respect it deserves. It is a calling and a career. I think you can be a homemaker without being a mother, but I do not think you can be a mother without being a homemaker. Homemaking is so much more than picking out decorative pillows for your couch. Our society has convinced us otherwise. The truth is motherhood and homemaking really take training and what I want to focus on here is nutrition. We have been taught to outsource one of the most important foundations of life, our food. Nutrition and the physiology of the body, what it needs to run, needs to be a series of mandatory classes in high school. Home economics need to return to the classroom as well. Cooking is a life skill that should be taught in the home, but that is not often the case. Our busy lives today make this very challenging. I think beginning really in my generation, I’m a GenXer, the art of cooking really left the home. Fast food restaurants were everywhere, microwaves were in every house at this point, pre-made and boxed foods (I use the word food loosely here), even baby foods were on the shelves all advertised as healthy. These products are full of harsh chemicals and additives truly not suitable for human consumption. They also contain poorly sourced ingredients from plants covered in toxic pesticides as well as animals not fed or treated properly. We are also conditioned by advertisements and agendas that being connected to our food and preparing it at home is too difficult, takes too much effort, and not worth our time.

Mothers are to this day constantly convinced that they are not doing enough as homemakers. So you can see how and why mothers would go with what seemed to be the easier alternative, especially with the cost of inflation, so many families feel forced to have dual incomes. That also creates exhausted mothers emotionally and physically. Naturally, you cannot teach what you do not know. So we now have generations of women having babies, and they don’t know how to feed themselves or their babies. Nutritional deficiencies are rampant. Sadly, they are not recognized by most of the conventional medical community and misdiagnosed. Prescription drugs are handed out everyday, but we not drug deficient, we are nutrient deficient. Being a homemaker is an art and a science. It was once the main role of women, and it became pushed away (by design for other reasons I won’t get into here), then damaging the flow of health in the family.

So what I’d like to do here is help by providing some tools to get you started on nourishing yourself, so you can thrive in your home, and then teach your family how to nourish as well. If you want some more in depth help, I work with moms with one on one consultations. You want to begin with some basic level nutrition. I am of the mind that humans are unique and cannot be compared with animals when it comes to eating habits. We were designed by the Lord to eat animals and plants. They were all put here for us to enjoy and care for on this earth. I believe we thrive when eating enough protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Many experts will differ here, but from research and personal experience this is where I presently sit. I’ve been all over the spectrum and find this the most balanced and doable. I don’t believe in restricting food groups. I do believe in high quality sourcing, proper food preparation, and doing our personal best in those areas.

We need to understand what enough actually looks like. That is going to be individual. This is based on age, weight, and height. We need enough calories to just exist. We cannot just pick an eating plan that specifies it’s a certain number of calories and know if it is enough or not without getting detailed. A simple way to get an idea of what that is for you is to know your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). A calorie is a measurement or unit of heat. A warm body is a healthy body. We need to eat enough calories to give us enough energy to heat our bodies. If you find you run cold, have cold hands and feet often, that is a strong indication that metabolic function is low and you are not eating enough. You can begin by using a free TDEE calculator like this one. This will let you know however many daily total calories one needs to live in their body. In other words this is enough at your current age, weight, activity level, etc to allow for over all function just to sit up, stand, breathe, sleep, and poop. You would be very surprised at this number of calories versus how many you are actually taking in.

That leads us to our next step is knowing how much you are actually eating. Please try to have fun with this and don’t get too crazy about it. You do not have to track your food forever. I used to think that this was not necessary. I thought tracking your macros were for people obsessing over weight loss. When I say macros in case you are not familiar with what that means, it refers to macro nutrients. Our macro nutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fat. I would say that as long as you are eating real whole foods that it was all that mattered. I no longer believe that entirely. However, I will say this is a great exercise because you will learn a lot. In order to do this you will need a hard copy food journal, a notebook from the dollar store will do. You will also want to have a kitchen scale. A third really helpful app or website is Cronometer. For 3-5 days I want you to track every food and drink that you consume. Keep your notebook with you. A notebook is like insurance. You could just use Cronometer, but you may not have a chance to enter everything until the end of the day and it’s easy to forget something. It’s just a really good habit to write down what you’re eating anyway so you can look back and see what works for you and what doesn’t, what foods make you feel great, and which ones seem to slow you down. If you work with a health coach, nutritional therapy practitioner, or nutritionist this is excellent data for them as well. Food is medicine so that’s good feedback for them to be aware of as they help you. You eventually can make this a family activity. Kids like to measure and weigh. Keep it fun.

Make it really simple and first dial in your protein. Protein is where most people, especially women under eat a lot. The general consensus is most people need 0.8-1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So again for simplicity if you weigh 130lbs, then to sustain that body weight, you need 130 grams of protein per day. Being on top of our protein consumption really assists to balance out our meals. You can almost not overeat when protein ratios are correct. I say almost because fat can be tricky sometimes. Fat is delicious and it is easy to get a bit too much. We definitely need fat. Fat is also a very calorically dense nutrient and that can put us over our calories for the day. When we have too many calories that don’t get burned we do store it as fat on our bodies. I really don’t want that to be your focus right now though. This post is not about weight-loss, it’s about eating enough.

130 Grams of Protein In A Day looks Like (Only Protein Listed Below; Not All Food Needed For Daily Consumption)

6oz Low Fat Organic Cottage Cheese (20 grams) I love Kalona Supernatural

2 Hard Boiled Eggs (12 grams)

3 Organic Chicken Sausages (9 grams)

1 Scoop Equip Brand Prime Protein Powder (21 grams) Save 15% with the link

1 Cup Raw Goat Milk (8 grams)

4oz Grass Fed Beef Patty (24 grams)

2oz Sheep Feta Cheese (8 grams)

Mid-Day Square Bar (6 Grams)

5oz Cod Fish (25 grams)

All of this totals out to 133 grams of protein. you will notice that a majority of the foods here are animal based. The exception is the 6 grams from the Mid Day Square Bar. The reason for this is protein is much more bio-available (absorb-able) in the body from animal sources. Our bodies just don’t break down plants the same especially when it comes to protein. So momma, eat the meat, eggs, and dairy, please. It is my opinion that protein powder once a day is okay, but shouldn’t be used more than that as we were designed to chew our foods. I really like Equip Protein Powder because it’s just beef. I also like Paleo Valley Bone Broth Protein Powder. That one is only 15 grams of protein. You can bump it with a scoop of hydrolyzed collagen from Perfect Supplements. Use my discount code KHWPerfect10.

After protein is dialed in then you can begin looking at carbohydrates and fat. Go back to your TDEE calculator. If you scroll down you’ll see a Macronutrient section. Look at the fat and carbs suggested there under the first column for moderate. I think that’s a safe place for most people. If you lift weights a lot and you are progressing you could consider the higher carb column. Talk with your nutrition expert to see what is best for you. You can then plug your foods on Cronometer and see how it lines up with those amounts.

Make sure you are choosing whole food ingredients. If you have a local farmers market or farmer near you, get acquainted with them. Keep your meals really simple. Shop USDA organic if you can, and if not, whole foods that are conventionally grown/raised always trump ultra-processed foods. You don’t need gourmet, just wholesome and delicious. I really like referring people to the Weston A Price Foundation for more nutrition guidance. Should you need access to raw milk this is a great website: realmilk.org.

If you have any digestion, gut, or food intolerance issues, unless it is an actual allergy, please understand that food or even food group avoidance can further add to deficiencies. It is worth working with a professional for even just a few months. I really like the combination of utilizing the medicine of homeopathy plus the GAPS protocol for whole body healing. That’s a whole other blog post in itself.

I pray this information blesses you and you are able to use the information to be well, feel good, and thrive. Some of the links in this post are my affiliates. You are never required to purchase through them, but when you do, you bless my work. Thank you in advance!