I'm Back

Yesterday I got back from an amazing vacation to Savannah, GA and Hilton Head Island, SC. Both places were absolutely beautiful and I have a lot of fun stories to tell. Those stories should keep me stocked up on blog posts for the next week.

Before I left for vacation, I basically cleaned out all of the perishable food in my fridge. I did this for 2 reasons: 1. I was going to be gone for almost a week and didn't want to find any terrible smells when I returned. 2. I knew that if I didn't have any food to eat that I would be forced to go to the grocery upon my return. As I mentioned in a previous post, after my vacation I planned on continuing eating real food with a few changes from the original challenge. And I am happy to report that my grocery trip today was successful in keeping with that plan.

This morning I made a 7 day meal plan and detailed grocery list, then headed out to Whole Foods and Kroger. I did so well with my shopping and I only bought a couple of impulse items that strayed from my shopping list. For the most part, I stuck to the rules of the challenge. I did, though, buy a couple of items that had more than 5 ingredients, but I had already decided that I was going to relax on that rule a little bit as long as I knew what all of the ingredients were and there weren't too many ingredients. I also did much better in terms of how much money I spent. I only bought for 7 days instead of 10, but my final total was well under half of what I had spent for the 10 day challenge. I think that was a result of not having to buy everything organic, lack of pressure in making sure that I was not buying anything against the rules, and being more comfortable with buying this type of food. It was still more expensive than my normal grocery bill, but I think the health benefits are well worth the added cost.

I can't wait to start eating real food again. I have felt awful for the past couple of weeks when I went back to eating non-real food. Especially on my vacation, I really let myself go. I mean, come on, we were in Savannah. I had to eat what the locals eat. But now, I'm ready for healthy food once again.

No vacation stories today. I'll post some later in the week. But for now, I will leave you with a teaser picture from Savannah. Two of my favorite things about Savannah were the beautiful trees and the really cool architecture. I took about 250 pictures on the trip and I would say that at least 200 of them are of trees or buildings!  Here is one of my favorite tree pictures that I took.