100 Days of Real Food – Updates

Long time, no post! It’s been a while since my last entry, but with a performance ending and the semester winding down, my time has opened up a bit. I can see the end of my first semester back at school, and Thanksgiving break is right around the corner. I’ve learned so much but I’ve also never been so busy, so my apologies again. Luckily, without a show to worry about, I’ve had some time to work on new blog posts that will be coming up in the weeks to come.

I thought I’d start with an update on the 100 days of mini-challenges. I’m happy to say we’ve gotten through almost all of them.

When I last posted,I was on the 100% whole grain challenge. We also did the mindful eating challenge (stop when you feel full), the no refined sweeteners challenge, and the no refined oils challenge. I haven’t brought myself to commit to no sweeteners at all (my sweet tooth is brutal, especially in cold months) but we are moving on to the nothing artificial challenge this week.

Some of the challenges have been really easy. We anticipate the nothing artificial challenge to be a breeze this week. Halloween was a couple weeks ago and all that fake and terrible candy is a thing of the past. My schedule is more open so we’re actually able to get back to home-cooked meals on a much more regular basis. All of the snacks we buy come from Outpost, so even our more “junky” food tends to come with labels promising the products to be free of all artificial colors and flavors.

Some of the challenges have been really hard. We learned the most doing the no refined sweeteners and oils challenges. First, it’s really hard to separate from Veganaise when you’re used to having it all the time, and it’s hard to find products made from olive oil and coconut oil that aren’t also made with soybean oil or canola oil. I get it, we have a surplus of refined oils. It was pretty eye-opening to see “olive oil” products featuring this ingredient but also having other oils as well.

The refined sweetener challenge was equally hard. Sometimes I can go a while without anything sweet, so that’s usually not a huge problem. However, once you realize that evaporated cane sugar is in everything you buy, including savory items, you go a little crazy. Needless to say, I’m excited for the nothing artificial challenge because it seems miles easier than the refined sweetener challenge.

Next week is what might be our last week until I do the full no sweeteners mini-challenge. On our last week, we will not have any packaged items that have more than 5 ingredients in them, no matter what the ingredients are. I’m thinking this challenge will also be fairly easy for us, but we shall see.

So, after that, what’s next for me in challenges? I’ve been interested in doing a “Give it 100” challenge since I heard about the program, so I’m thinking that might be next. Instead of a food challenge, I think I’m going to want it to be activity-based. I might try to do yoga for 100 days straight and see what happens. I might try to do as many push-ups as I can and see where I am at the end. I’m not quite sure yet. Whatever I decide, I’ll end up taking on the challenge on December 1, so you’ll see an update then.