Unprocessed: October...week one!

So I made it!  I've survived my first full week of an unprocessed diet.  It hasn't been excruciatingly hard, but it certainly hasn't been the easiest either.  For one, I'm spending twice as much time as I normally would in the grocery store because I'm scrutinizing the labels...and I've been floored by my findings.  For example, it's almost impossible (unless you go to a bakery) to get unaltered bread.  Don't believe me?  Try it.  Next time you're grocery shopping and are perusing the bread aisle, look at the ingredients on the back of the package and see if you can pronounce everything that's labeled. It's insane. Half of the things listed I can't even begin to pronounce and I find myself practically shouting, "what are you?!" at the seemingly innocent, brightly packaged loaf of "bread" staring back at me.

Since I started this, I've also been greeted with a lot of questions, mainly all somewhat along the lines of, "How do you feel?  Do you feel any different"?  The answer that I keep giving is "yes, but I don't know if it's in my head."  And that's the truth.  I have noticed that I have a LOT more energy (and I'm high energy to begin with.  Will I be literally bouncing off the walls come week four?).  In fact, I've had so much energy that my standard 2 cups of morning coffee has been reduced to one.  Simply because I'd have one cup, shrug my shoulders and think to myself that I'm good to go.  Now I'm not about to go singing from the rooftops, fervently insisting that I'm a changed woman.  I do feel generally "healthier" but I'm still trying to articulate what that means and how that feeling may change over the course of the next three weeks.

So that's the good part.  I've determined that I generally feel "healthier" but the tough part has been "de-programing" my mind when it comes to food.  While I consider myself to be a relatively healthy eater, I don't consider myself a dieter and I'm not used to things being "off-limits".  I tend to go by the philosophy of "everything in balance" and "as long as my jeans fit, I'm good".  Though I haven't felt that I've missed out on too much, there have been some challenges, mainly pertaining to eating out.  This week I met some friends for a mid-week lunch and one of my friends ordered seasoned waffle fries.  I thought I was going to jump across, knocking everything over in it's path to get to them.  (Don't worry, I didn't..I was able to stay cool.) I also didn't realize how much I love pretzels.  They're usually my "go-to" snack and boy, do I miss them.  Which brings me to a question for you....does anyone know of any good, all natural, unprocessed pretzels?  C'mon dude, help a girl out!


So that's that.  One week down and three to go!