Living a Simply Human Life

I talked already about how we are simplifying our Christmas around here and that's just the beginning of our efforts to become more simply human. I can't claim credit for the title, I'll give that credit to Mark Rogers of The Simply Human blog and podcast. Mark works at the same University where I work and we went on a retreat last spring where I got to pick his brain a bit about his crazy eating and training, he has quite the history of self-experimentation. Over the summer he started his new blog pulling together all that he had learned from reading, experimenting, and just living simply. The goal of the Simply Human Lifestyle is to move, eat, sleep, and enjoy like humans should. Simplify life and go back to our roots. How were we designed to live?

We are slowly working on finding what that means for our family but so far it means taking our daughter for daily walks and walking to work when possible. It means spending time together as a family. It means making our family a priority over work. It means eating less processed foods and cooking at home more often than eating out. It means not ever feeling guilty over what we eat. Yes, we try to eat less processed and eat out less but when we do eat out or eat foods just for taste (I'm looking at you Graeter's!) we don't stress about it, we enjoy it. It means not staying up late just because we can and instead getting good quality sleep when the baby sleeps. For me it means breastfeeding my daughter and finding childcare that allows me to drop in and feed her during the day! It means being close to my baby by wearing her around the house and holding her a lot.

These are our goals, we want to live like we were meant to live without giving in to all of the distractions of our modern world, without obsessing over things like "diet" and "exercise." If we eat the foods that we were designed to eat and move in ways that we were designed to move then we will be healthier and happier for it, we will sleep better and enjoy life more!

So, that's where we are headed, it's a journey and one we hope to enjoy.