Our Story

I know “unprocessed” and “organic” are popular words in certain circles. I however have always been in the “I’m too poor for that” camp. I was first confronted with the idea of unprocessed food when on vacation in June 2012 with my friend Joy and her daughter. My husband, Tom, and I had bought a timeshare and were making the most of the limited availability of locations by going to Disney world for a week. Since my friend Joy has a 4 year old… who better to accompany us on the trip! Joy has always been health conscious. She had also been living in Manilla for the past year and had lots of access to fresh foods. We got to Orlando several hours before we could check into the resort, so we decided to go grocery shopping. Joy was horrified by some of my food choices (who doesn’t want to eat Coco Pebbles for breakfast????) Anyway, later that day at the resort we started talking about eating unprocessed and organic foods. For whatever reason, I went on the defensive and advocated for all the chemicals and crap that are in most of the foods that I eat. 15 minutes later I’m sure Joy was frustrated with my ignorance and we dropped the subject. I didn’t really think about it again.

Then, in October 2012 my same friend Joy took the October Unprocessed challenge (read more about that here: http://www.eatingrules.com/2012/11/october-unprocessed-2012-posts/. She blogged about it ( http://jandc2.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/october-unprocessed/). For most of the month, my thoughts were “Stop blogging about food and get back to posting adorable pictures of your daughter!!!!” But I faithfully read all her posts without giving much more thought to eating unprocessed myself.

Cut to about a month ago… my husband mentions to me that he read something about eating unprocessed. I talked to some friends at work about it and we all laughed about what a silly idea it was. Then I started reading. I started with Andrew’s blog (linked above... he’s the creator of October Unprocessed). His blog gave me the push to actually start reading labels on some of the food in my pantry. Ummm…. Gross. That’s all I have to say. What are all of these things in my food? I jumped on the unprocessed bandwagon whole heartedly. Tom, the less impulsive one in our relationship, had backed off the idea a little bit and suggested that we do more research. I read a few more blogs. The more I read the more I was convinced. Tom and I are planning to start trying for a baby in April and I really like the idea of getting rid of toxins in my body, and my food, before getting pregnant.

Only potential issue- I dislike cooking. I am looking forward to trying new things, like homemade potato chips and granola (both of which I attempted this past weekend… more on that later). But I have a feeling the novelty of that will wear off soon. I am looking forward to Tom and I having something we can focus on together, and I know that that he will be a big help in the kitchen. Maybe I will learn to enjoy cooking since I’m onboard with the overall goal.

So here it is, our plan:

In January, we will slowly replace the things in our cabinets with unprocessed versions. Instead of instant white rice, we will buy brown rice. Instead of light yogurt with sugar we will get greek yogurt with honey. You get the idea. More on our first trip to the grocery store in search of unprocessed foods later...

In February, we will try to go unprocessed the entire month (minus a few cheat meals here and there).

Beyond February, we will try to find a balance that works for us. Probably mostly unprocessed with more cheat meals allowed. We don’t want to be those people who stop going out to eat or don’t order pizza every now and then. I think most of the time will be good enough for us. We shall see.

I plan to blog about the experience at least from now until the end of February. Join us if you’d like or stop reading now if you are not interested. I am going to try to keep a weekly food diary on the blog, as well as posts about recipes, grocery shopping, great products, and any potential effects on my mood, sleep or energy levels.

Thanks for reading!