Rule #1- Eat Food

Rule #1

Eat Food.

How simple is that?! Well, rather than quote all of the text of this first and most fundamental rule, this rule is just the beginning of addressing eating real food and avoiding processed and packaged foods that are full of chemicals and additives. This rule comes across as “setting the stage” and then future rules elaborate on this, so I wont get too far into it other than to say that the first sentence of the paragraph that follows “Eat Food”, says “These days this is easier said than done, especially when 17,000 new products show up in the supermarket each year.”

So how do we begin? What’s the plan? This is how we started gearing up for our focus on real food: Lee and I have been wrapping our minds around doing this for a few weeks, and we have been reading labels like crazy. Every time I take something out of a cabinet or the fridge, I read the label. Several things, that are easier to let go of, have already hit the trash can. For example, the half eaten bag of baked BBQ chips that had about 25 ingredients, and there are several other things that need to go next, like the embarrassing reduced-fat, little, square, orange cheezy crackers that glared at me from the snack cabinet yesterday. Those were blatant offenders, without even getting into the detailed rules that follow, and those kind of things will be the first “to go.” I am aware that there are a lot of better, affordable alternatives to those, like real cheese and the almonds and dried fruit that we already eat a lot of , and we are not major “junk food junkies” anyway. In fact, we eat a lot less of that stuff and a lot more fruits and vegetables, than most, already. BUT, it is eye-opening to see how much food in our kitchen IS in the realm of “no good” and to realize which things are going to be harder to part with than others.

Again, as I mentioned in my first post, I also personally don’t think it is practical to clean out everything all at once and “crash course” it. I think it is smarter for us to get rid of things in waves. Some things we are going to get rid of completely, but there are a lot of things we will just work on substituting with a better version (i.e. organic, if a reasonably priced one exists ...eh hem, at TJs!!) or hopefully a better choice that still satisfies.... a little at a time. This way we can slowly get rid of bad habits while replacing them with good ones, so ideally these changes will last! FYI, sugar is going to be my most challenging thing to wean off. I have a major sweet tooth and my sugar intake is too high, and I need to reduce that to a minimum. I KNOW that will be one of the keys to losing weight , too!

As I mentioned above, the food rules get much more specific, very soon, and I will be too.

For now, Lee and I are identifying the foods in our house that are most likely on their way out, and starting to think of how we will replace them and/or let go of them completely (sigh.....).