My Eye-Opening Moment

Most people who dramatically change their lifestyles have an eye-opening moment. A moment when something happened to them that made them take a hard look at their life and make some serious changes. It is usually not something positive, and sometimes it can be too late to completely repair the damages.

For my family, our eye-opening experience about our health and finances came three years ago. It resolved us to a new way of life that I am grateful for each and every day.

Here I wanted to share that moment with you:

Beginning

Four years ago, my husband and I were eating fast food often, our groceries ran about $150 a week for the two of us, and my shopping list always contained Little Debbie snacks and Doritos. None of this phased us. It was the food on which we were raised and felt it was the normal way to eat.

Even after our first son was born, we continued to eat as we were, thinking our son was getting the best.

Panic

Then, three years ago, some events occurred that had us hurting financially. One month, my husband sat down to do the bills and informed me that I had $90 to feed our family of three for the entire month.

At first, I panicked. I had a moment familiar to many of us where I was convinced we would never get through it. I was ready to pull out the credit cards just to feed our family.

After my initial period of fear and self-pity, I decided it did not have to be that way.

Resolve

I was determined to make that $90 work. I sat in our office, with meal plans, recipes, shopping lists and old receipts and worked away, slashing any food that was not an absolute necessity for survival.

It was then that I figured out how to stretch a 5 pound chicken into seven meals. I was determined to learn how to cook dried beans. I new I could make bread from scratch.

In one night, I learned more about grocery shopping, cooking and nutrition than I had in my entire life.

That month, I fed our family on a mere $90. In fact, I recall having a few dollars left over.

Peace

After that, I stopped buying chips and pre-prepared meals. There were no more preservative-filled sweets or vitamin-enriched cereals. We stopped consuming a pound of hamburger in one night.

Was our diet perfect? Certainly not. I am still learning, growing and improving. But it was a million times better than it had been.

And we felt great.

My eye-opening experience about our diet and our spending was one filled with worry, panic and fear. But it does not have to be that way.

Your Turn

Do not wait until you are struggling. Do not wait until you cannot pay your bills. Do not wait until you have a stroke, heart attack or are diagnosed with diabetes. Do not wait until you are filled with worry.

Change your life now. Make this your eye-opening experience.