Food Rules

As part of my healthy body challenge, I am committed to eating less processed foods. I have pretty much cut out or drastically reduced our consumption of most boxed goods. The exceptions I am forced to make are cereal (but only ones that don't change the color of your milk), ice cream, chicken nuggets, and Ranch dressing.

I have been following Michale Pollan's Food Rules in my quest to eat healthier. Some of his rules are pretty common sense. Take for example Rule #13: eat only foods that will eventually rot. It seems simple enough, but one would be surprised how hard it is to find meats, lunch meat, and pretty much anything that isn't filled with additives to keep it from spoiling. Oh shit. Add lunch meat to the list of processed foods I still have to buy. My brown-bagger hubby couldn't live without it.

Food rule #6: avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients. Of course, this doesn't include the list of ingredients in a recipe. What he means is to stay away from a box of crackers with 27 ingredients, 15 of which are completely unpronounceable.

My favorite rule is #39: eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. I love this rule for two reasons. First, it allows me to still eat cookies. Second, it forces me to practice something I really love to do but am not necessarily gifted at: baking.

Definitely check out Food Rules. It will really help you to see why eating frozen diet meals and canned soup isn't a healthy way to diet and lose weight. I used to live on frozen meals and canned soup but was still fat. Now, I make my own meals and soup to freeze and am losing weight. Totally worth it!

My weight today: 165.4 lbs. Note: I took my jeans off to weigh myself, and I kind of feel like I cheated. Oh well. Seeing 165 really made me feel better, so who cares?