5 day detox: no processed foods!

I woke up this morning feeling kinda puffy.

Maybe it was the Chinese takeout I had for dinner Saturday and breakfast Sunday. Maybe it was all the  beer tailgating I did over the weekend. At any rate, I felt yucky, and I decided to do something about it. That, and the fact I didn't get around to going to the grocery store yesterday.

I am going to try not to eat any processed food for 5 days. I am destined to fail, but I'm not looking at it from an all-or-nothing stance. It's like in school when you didn't have to get a 100% to get an A, you could get a 93%. Maybe I'll do this thing 93%.

I'm not going cold turkey for a number of reasons. Mainly it's that I can't quit my coffee habit. More specifically, I can't quit my coffee CREAMER habit. Granted I've weaned myself considerably. My drug of choice here is Fat Free Original Creamer. Doesn't matter if it's name brand or generic. I kicked the flavored creamer habit a while back and have stepped down to 1 tablespoon of this stuff per cup.

The second reason for not going cold turkey is that I have a lunch planned this week. But we are going to a place that has a salad bar, so it shouldn't be a total loss for that meal. I just don't know what the salad dressing situation will be. And, I'm going out for drinks with a friend for her birthday.

And thirdly, because I know that if I try to go cold turkey, I won't do it. It's a mental thing. So much pressure to not fail, and you end up failing. If you go into it knowing you've got a little leeway, it seems a little more manageable.

So, the rules are simple. No processed food. Five days. For the record, I'm considering processed food to be anything that has ingredients that I don't recognize or are unnecessary such as artificial color, flavor, etc. I'm not going to ban cheese, in other words.

Something like this...

Yikes. That's the Kroger Fat Free Original Creamer I put in my coffee this morning.