Eliminating Processed Foods

So I wrote earlier on Hubpages about my journey eliminating diet coke to try to deal with my chronic hives or urticaria, a disease that I seemed to have developed for no reason at all. The doctors call it "idiopathic" urticaria, but what I've basically learned over the years is that "idiopathic" is just a fancy word for doctors to explain they don't know what's wrong with you.

Now I've been down the medication wormhole. I've been on allegra, zyrtec, a zyrtec and zantac combo, xyzal, prednisone, and many, many more drugs. It seems that these medications are treating the symptoms, however, not the problem.

As I expressed with the diet coke situation, I have absolutely no idea what's causing this. But I did happen, by random chance, to meet a manicurist recently who noticed my hiving legs and told me that she had also had chronic hives. Her lasted for 8 months (mine have been ongoing since Sept. '06), and were only cured by visists to an osteopathic doctor and a strict diet of no alcohol and no processed foods.

I, of course, thought that I'd give the no processed foods diet a shot. It couldn't hurt to be eating all natural foods. Even if it didn't cure my hives, it might at least make me healthier.

I immediately found it surprisingly difficult to figure what exactly is processed and what isn't. The advice that I was given was to only eat things that occurred exactly as they were in nature. It seems like it should be common sense, but it's been surprisingly difficult. For example, is milk processed? It's pasteurized, which is a process, but it comes straight from cows and the pasteurization is necessary to keep it fresh. Wouldn't it be unwise to eliminate milk altogether? What about cheese?

Cookies and crackers were a no brainer. But what about whole grain breads, those which were made with no corn syup, no sugar, etc.? Is that processed food? Wikipedia's entry on processed foods says that BAKING is a process. Plus, there are dyes and preservatives in just about everything. For some reason, people feel better if their flour and sugar is white, even though it doesn't occur that way at all in rea life.

So I've decided to stick as closely as I can to only natural things which means that the majority of my new diet is fruits and vegetables.

So I've only been on this new processed food diet for two days now, but I promise to keep you updated on what I've been eating and how I've been feeling.

Day 1

Breakfast:Banana

Lunch: Two boiled eggs, bowl of cherries

Snack: Nectarine

Dinner: Chicken cooked in cold pressed olive oil, salad with cherry tomatoes, lmonds, peppers, and spinach, olive oil dressing (is olive oil processed)

After dinner snack: carrots, more cherries

Surprisingly I was not at all hungry after this first day.

Day 2

Breakfast: Banana

Lunch: Two boiled eggs, one whole grapefruit

Dinner: Same as Day 1

Tomorrow I'm going to have oats with raisins and cinammon for breakfast, cause the bananas bound to get boring. I also expect to add some more meats into my diet as it goes on and experiment with fish, as its supposed to be especially healthy for you.

If any of you hubbers out there have tips/recipes, etc. I would be very grateful.

This is an experiment, not quite a how-to entry yet. I hope that my health gets better, and I'll let you all know how navigating the non-processed world goes.