Days 1-7

1. Eat food.
2. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

In a perfect world, I would have started writing on the day I actually started this whole food rules project, but life, as it tends to, got in the way. Today marks day 7 of the project, but we'll still begin at the very beginning and start at rule 1: Eat food.

It's pretty awesomely fitting that I should struggle with the very first rule on the very first day, although I think when Pollan said to eat food, he was talking about eating real food as opposed to what he calls, "edible foodlike substances." He wasn't actually instructing me to, you know, eat in general. That part should be fairly self-explanatory. And yet, that's exactly what happened.

This is what happened in my head last Wednesday when I started. I went up to the Santa Fe Farmer's Market the week before and stocked up on locally made bread, cheese, yogurt and meat. I signed up for the Skarsgard Farms CSA, ensuring myself a steady supply of locally grown, organic produce. And I took all of these delicious, fresh, local ingredients and turned them into smoothies, casseroles, stir-fry's and other pre-made, ready-to-grab breakfasts and lunches for the coming week.

Here's what actually happened: I woke up on Wednesday morning and thought, Oh shit, what am I going to eat?!?

I prowled around the kitchen in a sleepy stupor for about a half an hour and probably opened and closed the fridge in frustration before getting confused five minutes later and opening it again about a dozen times when I eventually realized with amazement there is absolutely nothing in this house I can eat.

Seriously, before that moment on Wednesday when I opened up the fridge for the last time in utter defeat, I was planning to, like, make my own yogurt. I was definitely going to stay away from boxed breakfast cereal. But here I was, on the very first day, settling on some weird, ultra-healthy sprouted grain cereal my mom likes to eat and sighing as I decided that yogurt not made by me, but at least containing nothing but milk and live active cultures was going to have to be good enough.

Wednesday was a bad day. All I could muster up for lunch was a salad and by dinner I was tired, hungry, and beaten down. It didn't help that I lost my driver's license on the bus - my New York driver's license. A little part of my old life that I could carry around; a reminder to myself and everyone else that I was there. I was a part of that world. But now I have to go down to the DMV and get a New Mexico license again, because I am not there anymore. That is not my world anymore.

I lay on the couch, grieving and listening to my tummy rumble so loud the neighbor's probably heard it and all I could think was, forget it. There was nothing for me to eat, and it just wasn't worth it to get up and try and figure it out. Now, I am not one of those skinny bitches who get to 5 o'clock in the afternoon and realize they haven't eaten anything all day. I love food. I always remember to eat. But that night, I just could not find it in me to eat dinner. Breakfast and lunch the next day were similarly light, and, again, by dinner, I was famished but finished.

On Day Three I bought found some local Yukon Gold potatoes, and that baked potato I had for lunch was the most satisfying the I've ever eaten. I don't usually eat potatoes; I've always been fairly strict about what Pollan lists as Rule 43, but I threw out that rule and my own personal one in order to eat the first real meal I had had in three days.

I have not been to the Farmer's Market, nor started ordering from Skarsgard, but I've at least been to La Montanita, the all-natural, crunchy-hippy local co-op in town, and it looks like I've got the concept of eating food under control. At least for the time being. Unfortunately, I've had to compromise a lot more than I'd hoped with the following 82 rules just to manage that very first one with some modicum of success.