My Anti-Diet

A Processed Free Kind of Life

So I'm all about being healthy, and in my earlier days I was very health conscious. Then I got married to a honey bun eating, sweet tea drinking, snacking at midnight kinda guy. And I love him, but his habits started rubbing off and I may or may not have gained 50 pounds since we've been married....and he gained....nothing. It's not fair but instead of making excuses I decided to give a few different diets a try. I ate low carb, I joined weight watchers, the gym and fatsecret.com. I tried writing down my caloric intake and even started seeing a weight loss specialist. I am admitting all of this to all of the poor souls reading this to let you know...nothing has really helped. So I lack a little self control.

Today I got home from a 5 day cruise to the Bahamas with Bobby,his sister, Lindsey, and her husband, Billy. If you've never been on a cruise you might not know that there is a limitless supply of delicious food available 24 hours a day. I decided to enjoy the cruise, to be reasonable, but enjoy the food that I didn't have to prepare or clean up. And that I did. So now it is time to buckle down and lose this "marriage weight". But I'm not going on a "diet", I'm giving up processed foods and beverages. The big kicker is Bobby has agreed to do it with me. I have given up processed foods before, for a week, and LOVED it! I felt so good and I had so much energy, along with weight loss!

So, with Bobby on board, I'm going to document this week of processed free foods. It sounds silly but the truth is we eat SO MUCH processed food. So much of what we eat comes from a box or a bag or a fast food restaurant, so it takes a lot of time, preparation and creativity. We went to Publix today to load up on fresh produce and processed free foods. Here's a look-



This is my pantry...STOCKED FULL (thanks to couponing) with processed foods. When I was looking at different blogs and websites about gluten free diets or processed free diets, they said your refrigerator should be full and your pantry should be empty. I'm not going to toss my pantry items but for this week, the pantry is off limits.

Here's some of the things we purchased. Nuts, chicken, tuna and salmon for protein this week. I grow a few different herbs in my mini garden but decided to buy some extra parsley and cilantro for extra flavor this week.

Some more of the produce we purchased. Lemons and limes can be used for some great marinades and to squeeze on to grilled veggies. The more color in your cart, the better!

I'm not sure why I thought you needed this, but here it is! Our fridge before....

And our colorful fridge afterwards, loaded with DELICIOUS fruits and veggies.

I'll also be using a lot of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar this week for cooking, grilling, marinades and dressings.

Some people think you should put tomatoes in the fridge. DON'T DO IT! It ruins them. Tomatoes stay out! We bought a lot of fruit. This will only get eaten if I prepare and package it at the beginning of the week. Our lives tend to get hectic in the week so I cut up everything on Sunday and I bag it up individually so that we can grab it on the go.

For breakfast this week I'll be making eggs or fruit smoothies. I'll post my smoothie recipes as the week goes on.

We decided to head to Qdoba for our last super processed meal. Yum.

Stay posted this week for my processed free recipes and menu! It should be good! Try to take note of everything you eat this week and if your diet was anything like mine, you'll be surprised by how many preservative rich foods you eat.