Let's talk about healthy eating for a second, shall we? Because even as homesteaders, we sometimes need to be reminded how to eat like a homesteader. (Or maybe it's just me who gets caught up in convenience and ignores the fact I'm basically living in the middle of an elite grocery store?) So today I'd like to share with you a super simple homesteader diet that might keep you on track with making the right food choices most of the time.

(Don't want to read all the words? This blog post is also a podcast—just press the triangle play button on the little black bar at the top of this post!)

Please don't let the word "diet" freak you out. This isn't complicated at all. I'm not selling anything, there's no app or book or 21 day meal plan here. I'm just talking about how I have learned to frame food and meals in my mind as a homesteader. And if it helps you, too, that's awesome!

It occurred to me the other day that most diets (meaning weight loss plans) boil down to a couple things:

a) Not eating more food than you're using the energy of. In other words, moving your body more than you're shoving things in your mouth.

b) Eating decent food. Not basing the majority of your food consumption on Oreos and boxed macaroni and cheese.

Now there are a million and two different eating plans out there and even though they basically boil down to points a and b above, people all need different framework to get there. Some people count calories, some people count carbs, some people focus on eating from certain food groups in certain ratios...there are lots of different options for calculating and following a weight loss/diet thing.

In the past, those things have worked for me—for awhile. And then I get frustrated. Mostly because I'm a bit of a perfectionist and if I miss a day of logging stuff into an app or go over my calorie count because there was a birthday party, I'm pretty sure I've ruined my entire body, have failed at The Diet, and I make myself feel better with ice cream and marshmallows in ridiculous proportions.

Yes. Me. That girl that has that one farmish homesteading blog.

So I got to thinking, since some people need to "frame" their way of eating differently—author included—awhile back I started thinking about my eating as the homesteader diet — and my daily food choices need to focus on three things: food from the garden, food from the barn, and food from the kitchen.

I think I'm on to something. Hear me out.

Step #1 of the homesteader diet — eat from the garden:

I'm talking produce from a garden, orchard, etc. As a homesteader, hopefully that's your garden or orchard. But as a Minnesota gal, believe me—I understand we can't all grow all the things.

So eating from the garden means making sure you're taking in fruits and veggies (fresh, frozen, canned/jarred) from your garden, or someone else's—which includes the grocery store. Obviously the closer that garden is to being your own garden, the better. But when it comes down to it, choosing to eat peaches or kale from the store is better than Twinkies, right?

Step #2 of the homesteader diet — eat from the barn:

Whether it's chicken, pork, rabbit, eggs, or other animal products like lard, make sure that food from the barn also makes up part of your day. You're raising those animals, right? They're going into your freezer, right? This is what you should be basing your eating from—not frozen pizza from the store.

Hopefully the meat/animal products come from your barn, but a local homestead or even the grocery store is great. Again, a pork roast or a whole chicken from the local grocery is better than basing your day around some frozen super processed conglomeration with 40,000 ingredients...right?

Step #3 of the homesteader diet — eat from the kitchen:

Here is where things get tricky, and where I diverge from what a lot of different health gurus say—which makes sense because I'm not a health guru. (Or a doctor.