Whole Foods Diet

For work this month, they had everyone who wanted make a fitness goal.  Since excersise ain't really "my thing", I decided to go with a nutrition goal.

A nutritional goal was good for another reason as well: I have always been curious about how hard it would be to do a strict whole-foods diet.  After reading a few great books (aka In Defense of Food), I have been a lot more food conscience. 

So I decided to go on a week long whole-foods-only diet.  I will tell you how it went.

Here were the rules.  I couldn't eat anything (anything!) that was processed.  No refined sugar, no refined flour, no Yellow 5, no High Fructose Corn Syrup, no "Natural Flavorings", just plain old fashioned food.  That was pretty much the rules.

And so...
Breakfast:
My breakfasts ended up being pretty much the same thing every day: either homemade whole wheat bread with honey, or plain oatmeal.  These were both pretty easy to do.  I made the bread in the breadmaker and the oatmeal was easy in the microwave. 
On Saturday, I went all out and made homemade whole wheat banana pancakes in the blender.  They were super easy and delicious.  I didn't need to put honey or butter or anything on them to make them good.  I got the recipe off the internet.  I cooked some bacon to go along with them.

Lunch:
I stuck to homemade lunches, made from scratch.  I had "Red Beans and Rice", a favorite of mine with brown rice.  I had a chicken noodle soup I made in the crock-pot.  I had apples and other fruit. I had leftovers from Sunday dinner, meat and potatoes. 

Dinner:  Wasn't too bad.  I ate a lot of homemade salsa on different things.  I had eggs and bacon one night, whole wheat pasta with cheese and salsa another, more fruit, pickles, milk, more brown rice, etc.  One night I even had a surprisingly filling banana and raspberry smoothie.

Snacks:
I have now discovered popcorn.  Sprinkle on some salt and lightly butter (no margarine).  I bought a large container of unsalted peanuts, and they have been great. 

It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, but it was more inconvenient than I thought, too.  It shocked me the number of things I COULDN'T have.  The most striking example is when I went to reach for the chicken stock that I usually use to make Red Beans and Rice.  I checked over the ingredients almost as a formality, and sure enough, there was "Natural Flavorings" (which are anything but natural).  This happened on day 1 of the diet.  I took a deep breath, put the chicken stock back in the fridge, and used water instead. 
Needless to say, candy was out.  I also couldn't go out to get sushi like I wanted to, because of the white rice.  99% of things out of a can or box was out.  Halfway through the week, I got tired of homemade salsa and went and bought some expensive canned salsa that took me 10 minutes of scouring the salsa aisle to find.

Conclusions?  I concluded that I did feel better and had maybe a little more energy.  I felt good about what I had eaten and knew I was making healthy choices.  I never once overate during that week. Tortilla chips are usually one of my favorite things but they make me a little sickish afterwards; I never had that feeling once during the week.

However, maybe the "last 5%" isn't worth it.  If I were to implement this kind of diet permanently, I would feel fine about cooking usually with brown rice, but eating white rice with sushi at a restaurant.  I would feel fine about the occasional modest dessert.  In other words, I would feel ok about going 95% of the way with the diet, but the last 5% is probably not really worth it.

Oh.  And I lost 2 pounds that week.