About two months ago, I decided to switch to an all organic diet.  I try my best to eat fresh foods, grown and treated organically, and mostly from my local area.  It’s obviously difficult to stick to this way of eating when I go out to lunch or dinner, when I visit with a friend or family member, and when traveling.  But because I eat probably 95% of my meals at home, I’ve been able to stick to an organic diet pretty well.

Last week I had to travel to Ohio for four days to attend a funeral.  My brother, sister-in-law and I drove to Ohio on Monday and returned to NC on Thursday.  We were on a very tight schedule, staying with friends one night and family the next, and spending a total of 26 hours in the car.

One of the drawbacks to traveling with someone else, and having that someone else be the owner of the car your traveling in, is that you’re basically on their schedule and you go where they want to go.  Which means, most of my meals throughout the four days consisted of fast food and junk food out of rest stop vending machines.  I can admit that I did not eat one healthy thing the entire trip.

At first I was kind of excited–ROAD TRIP!  I was looking forward to eating bad food for a few days.  But I soon discovered that fast food and junk food were no longer my friends (were they ever?)

By Tuesday evening, I started to notice that my feet looked a little swollen.  I thought maybe it was from wearing heels and standing a lot during the service, but my feet didn’t hurt or anything.  By Wednesday morning, they were much worse.  Still no pain, but they were swollen enough to look like I had broken my feet or ankles!  I got a chance to get online Wednesday night and do a little research on why this may have been happening.  All signs pointed to my drastic change in diet.

Because my body is no longer used to eating processed foods high in sodium, my body was retaining water like crazy!  Because a person’s feet are the lowest part of their body, gravity takes over and this is where the water goes.  My poor diet, consisting of fast food and junk food, had caused my feet to blow-up like balloons!

I never thought this change in diet would effect me as much as it did!  I couldn’t believe it!  Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anything I could do about it–not driving, not in charge.

I’m happy to say that once I got home and back on my normal diet, the swelling went down in less than 24 hours and my feet are back to normal.

All I can say is anyone who doesn’t think eating organic makes a difference, my feet beg to differ!  Even if I had just had access to fresh foods, not highly processed foods with tons of preservatives and sodium, I think I would have been okay.  One thing I have learned is that next time I go on any kind of a trip, I’m packing a cooler for the ride and stopping at a grocery store once I get to where I’m going!

I realize this blog doesn’t have anything to do with gardening, but gardening, especially organically, is all about being healthier for you, your family, and your environment.  I wanted to share my experience of what happened to me when I was not eating food that was healthy for me, anyone else, or my environment.  I’ll stick to my fresh, organic foods, thank you very much!

I know the pictures are not fantastic (and please don’t judge me for my feet!), but you can get the idea when comparing the the two pics.  Until next time, take care and happy gardening (and eating)!