The week before last, I ate like crap. I binged (although my "binges" are no longer several thousand calories in one sitting, but mostly consisted of several handfuls of Emily's chocolates and a few giant bowls of cereal) and I didn't bother tracking calories. I also skipped several workouts. It was just a bad week, and by Friday I'd put back on the weight I'd lost the previous two weeks (although I'm sure most of it was water weight) and felt gross.

One of my 101 in 1001 goals is to eat whole foods (nothing processed) for a week. There isn't one specific, official definition of what eating whole, unprocessed foods means, but for me it means eating (1) no refined sugar or flour, (2) mostly whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, and (3) "processed" foods so long as they contained no refined sugar or flour and I knew what every ingredient was. After last week, this seemed like the perfect week to attempt this goal. I planned our meals mostly out of the Super Natural Cooking cookbook (I mean, it has "whole and natural foods" right in the subtitle!). So, for example, I still ate whole wheat pita, yogurt, granola, whole wheat pasta... things I would be able to make if I had the ingredients, time and know-how. If it was an ingredient listed in Super Natural Cooking (like cheese or pasta), it met my standard of "whole foods" for this goal. (Exception: I ran the GW Parkway Classic 10 miler this morning and ate sports beans during the run. Considering I sweat a LOT when I run and have had issues in the past with unbalanced electrolytes when racing in humid weather, I was not going to mess around with that again.)

Today is my last day and I have to say, it has been working out great. We tried a bunch of new recipes this week. I lost the weight I'd put in the week before, plus an additional 3 pounds... and I'd eaten more calories this than I had in other weeks where I only lost a pound. I cut back on eating sweets a lot this week, eating more fruit (including dates, which I have just discovered... yum!). Adam baked up some whole wheat sandwich bread from this cookbook yesterday and today (it required some fridge-time overnight), and it smells awesome! I can't wait for it to finish cooling so I can try a slice. I knew I was going to be starving after the race and unable to eat the bagels and commercial granola bars at the finish line, so I made Alton Brown's granola bars yesterday. It's kind of sticky and crumbly, but really good. I used a Mediterranean dried fruit mix from Trader Joe's with cherries, apricots and figs. (Had to chop up the apricots and figs.) They really hit the spot... I've eaten three already! (Oh, and I get to check that off my 101 in 1001 goals too!) (Oh, and I also get to check off my goal of going an entire week without buying any food or drink out (excl. grocery shopping)... pretty easy when my entire week of meals is planned in advance!)

I really like eating this way. We planned this week's menu using the same approach. I may not be as strict, but I think as a general rule, I am going to try to keep as much of the junk out of my diet as possible. I already eat fairly healthy, but there is definitely some room for improvement. I'm not going to go totally crazy though... I am going to a baseball game on Wednesday and you can bet I'm gonna buy some funnel cake. :-)