A (Reluctant) Hippie Walks Into a Grocery Store...

I didn't quite capture all of Day 1's adventures in my first post.  Specifically, I neglected to mention that I went to 2 (count' em, TWO!) different health food stores and made the following purchases:

• Organic pearl barley
• Grass fed sweet cream butter (the first time I've purchased animal fat in several years)
• Applegate Naturals sliced roast beef (The best lunch meat I've ever tasted.  Period.)
• Andrew & Everett organic havarti cheese
• Refined coconut oil (the first time I've purchased an oil with saturated fat in many years)

One hippie thing I purchased, a bizarre cocoa beverage, was a big disappointment: Honest CocoaNova Mint Cacao Infusion.  The label looked promising enough:

Think you know cocoa?  Think again.  We start with cacao beans, the main ingredient in chocolate, and brew them to make a light, satisfying drink that you can indulge in anytime - guilt-free.  with only 50 calories per bottle, you get a delicious pick-me-up with the antioxidants and theobromine naturally found in dark chocolate.  It's cocoa as you've never known it.

Frankly, I don't care to know cocoa this way.  I was browsing the shelves to get my caffeine fix when I spied this bottle of intrigue.  It was like a horribly watered-down YooHoo with a hint of mint.  Good try, CocoaNova, but I'll take a guilt-full chocolate beverage instead.

DISCLAIMER: I then went to Target for cheaper, non-organic groceries, but did hippie-out on cage-free eggs and Horizon Organic 2% milk (yes - I'm ditching skim!).  I even bought ground turkey so I can make wholesome breakfast sausage for my husband and get him off the super-processed, mass-produced turkey sausage patties he usually gets.

My hunt for satisfactory natural face moisturizer yielded no returns. 

The Reluctant Hippie

Day 1.  A momentous occasion.  Over the past few years, I've chatted with many people who hold strong opinions about the chemicals (in foods, cleaning products, and beauty products, for example) we are exposed to everyday.  At first I was skeptical.  I listened to them talk about Whole Foods and Fair Trade and other hippie nonsense with amusement (despite outer appearances of utmost politeness, of course).  It wasn't that I thought these people were naive or dumb.  It was more of a refusal to accept that I could possibly be doing anything wrong.  How dare people challenge my diet sodas, my fragrant bodywashes with unpronounceable ingredients, my brightly colored M&Ms and Blow Pops!  And pity the fool who questions my caffeine intake!  After all, I was quite healthy and had been cozy with all kinds of chemicals for over 20 years.  How dare them, indeed.

But then I started thinking: maybe I'm not that healthy after all.  I have a mild seizure disorder, and have suffered from anxiety/depression as well as an eating disorder.  I sometimes get fatigued easily.  I almost never get quite enough sleep, and I often have a hard time focusing.  The point: It might be time to change some of my ways.     

So here I am, reluctantly becoming a hippie.  My definition of "hippie" may not be the same as yours.  To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how I define a hippie, but generally it is someone who is trying to live well, simply and sustainably.

So here are my goals.  I attempted to arrange them in order of priority and probable length of time to reach them:

1. Eat whole foods.
2. Avoid refined grains and processed carbohydrates.
3. Avoid excess sugar.
4. Stop using artificial sweeteners.
5. Avoid "bad" plastics.
6. Reduce waste.
7. Reduce energy consumption.
8.  Use natural body care products.
9. Grow my own food.
10. Do it myself. (This basically means making the products I currently rely on Target to provide.)

 This is just a starting point, and these goals are subject to change, but this is basically what I want to accomplish.

Thanks for joining me.