November unprocessed?

I've come to the conclusion that 100% unprocessed eating is not something that is in the cards for me, not even for one month. It is something that I will continue to strive toward, but I'm just not there yet. Here are some reasons/excuses:

1. My job is stressful, and I don't always feel like cooking when I get home. Eating food prepared by other people makes me intensely happy some times. I really like cooking, but some days I do not have the wherewithal/ingredients to make something satisfying.

2. #1 is primarily due to the fact that my body has little to no ability to buffer my blood sugar levels and I can go from completely fine to stark-raving-mad-starving in a matter of seconds. This is not conducive to microwaving leftovers much less making a healthy meal.

3. Going away for the weekend (when I do a lot of cooking that gets me through the week), sends me on a horrible tailspin of doom that results in me eating greasy Thai food and crackers all week.

4. Having a (my?) social life in Chicago is not super conducive to eating only unprocessed foods. I am the only on around me trying to do this in earnest and I am easily swayed by peer pressure. I do not like being "that guy" that makes special requests and given #2, my ability to just abstain in certain situation is not always doable. Seth doesn't mind the unprocessed eating, but is not really on board with 100% conversion to unprocessed-ness (mostly because of #5 I think). And while I am getting better at picking out healthier options on menus, sometimes a salad with grilled chicken breast cannot compete with nachos, especially when beer is involved.

5. There are some loopholes in the system that make me lose faith in it. Take the example in #4: it is entirely possible to make a giant cheese stuffed plate of nachos unprocessed (all the other ingredients can be bought/made without preservatives), and have a grilled chicken breast salad be processed (salad dressing, processed meat, etc) depending on where you go. Another great example is that according to the strictest set of rules by the guy who started October Unprocessed, you can have Fritos (corn, oil, salt) and not milk (because he has an unspecified issue with homogenization.) I guess what I am getting at is that I'm not sure that being unprocessed is the ultimate mark of a healthy food.

So despite all the excuses, I will still try. During the two weeks or so that I did eat almost entirely unprocessed, my stomach felt a lot better. But that could also be due to the fact that my stomach issues may be stress related, and that I had time to do things I enjoy doing (cooking and blogging) so I wasn't stressed. Anyway, here are some of the ways I can deal with the above mentioned excuses:

1. Even if I don't have time to cook or pre-prep dinners for the hard nights, I can keep things in the fridge or freezer (fruits, veggies, store bought unprocessed foods) to eat. I think I need a better grocery shopping plan.

2. I guess the solution to this one is encompassed in #1, but keeping things at work to get me home without dying. Individual packs of lightly salted nuts seems to be the solution here, because I also have a problem with stress snacking :)

3. I need to plan ahead. Bottom line. But not get pissed and quit if I fail.

4. If I know I'm going somewhere that not likely to have unprocessed things on the menu, I can try to eat ahead. Also, I can try to get better at picking salad over nachos. Maybe I'll hate it, but I can honestly say I have no picked salad over nachos frequently enough to say whether or not it's satisfying.

5. Decide what I think is reasonable and stick to it. The primary motivation for this is to be healthy and to hopefully figure out what sends my stomach into a rage, so eliminating milk because it's homogenized even though it doesn't bother my stomach and is fine in moderation is not something I'm going to do. I will also strive to minimize and not eliminate the unprocessed food, because sometimes the joy of occasionally indulging is too enticing.

So, in summary, I still like cooking, and I think label reading is an important exercise in awareness, so I'll keep posting recipes and thoughts on what I think is reasonable when I have time. I would welcome additional suggestions to any of the issues I have posed above. And during my lack of posting, I have been cooking unprocessed, I just haven't been sharing the results. I"ll try to catch up on that soon.