30 day challenge

For the next 30 days I am giving up sugar, salt, oil, and all processed foods.

In short, if it doesn't grow in the ground or on a tree, I'm not eating it.  Already having a year of veganism under my belt, this might not seem like such a big deal.  But I LOVE processed food, especially anything with sugar.

It's easy to be a vegan and rationalize that veganism is healthy and therefore it's okay to dump a pound of vegan margarine with several cups of sugar into a baked good, or to sneak shots of Himalayan sea salt into your mouth while cooking (actually, you don't have to sneak it if you live alone!).  Rationalizing that oreos are vegan, and since I don't eat the tasty sugary treats with dairy or butter, it's okay to consume copious amounts of oreos because I had vegan sausage (a highly processed unnatural food) for breakfast.

Last night I went to a vegan cooking demo at a Whole Foods, with an amazing chef advocating an unprocessed diet.  It's really not rocket science, if it's a chemical, it's not meant to be digested.  Things that are highly processed, even if originally a natural ingredient, have the nutrients squeezed out of them and replaced with addictive quantities of salt, sugar and/or fats.  And, as Chef AJ pointed out on the topic of dairy causing weight gain, "Drinking milk is for calves to turn into thousand pound cows." 

I wouldn't be very good at being me if I didn't impulsively try to make huge lifestyle changes and start new blogs whenever I have nothing better to do with my free time.

I told my friend Marco I was giving up processed foods and he accused me of "being such a consumer," understandble since on a whim after sitting through Chef AJ's demo and buying her book, I decided to change my entire diet. But the REAL consumer Stephanie would buy addictive processed foods and let the food industry manipulate her into spending money on products that can barely be considered food that they insist, she needs.

At least, that's what I read in the book I bought yesterday.

Chef AJ writes in her book that most of us will probably continue to kill ourselves with processed crap marketed as food.  She says if I'm not ready to change the way I eat, that's okay.  She says some people would rather die than change.

And though I can see through her thinly veiled reverse psychology in Chapter three of Unprocessed, I am actually spiteful enough to buy into it.  Supposedly it takes 30 days to change your palate, so I guess the trick here is get me to do it for 30 days and I'll miracoulously find kale delicious (I do find it delicious now, but only smothered in olive oil and salt) and never have any desire to go back to eating salt out of the shaker.

In preparation for Day 1 of my 30 day unprocessed challenge starting tomorrow, I went to the grocery store tonight for some spinach, kale, fruits, and other healthy crap that won't clog my arteries.  It was a strange feeling depositing my items onto the conveyer belt.   Normally, I avoid eye contact - you know that feeling when the cashier rings up your bottle of wine, tub of vegan margarine, and pack of oreos (when you went to the grocery store for some fresh veggies, but forgot them and then by the time you're at the register you don't want to walk allll the way back to produce)?  Ahhh grocery guilt.  A long time staple of my shopping trips.  This time I felt... acceptance? pride?  Whatever that feeling is when you're buying stuff that you're not ashamed of.

30 days starts in t-minus... 3 minutes!  I'm off to finish labeling all the processed crap in my pantry with "This will kill you, but go ahead and eat it if you want," or "What would Chef AJ think?"  (I don't actually want to throw the stuff out until I see how the 30 days goes).  Wish me luck!