Inspiration

This morning after waking up on a blowup queen size mattress in Los Angeles, the Trader Joe's Challenge was born! It had been a weekend of spending dinners at the Catalina Island Lobster Trap and breakfasts at the local corner diner with flapjacks, butter and loads of mayo on french fries. Enough was enough...we felt as sluggish as a bottle of ketchup at a 24 hour diner. Bloated and full of junk we made a pact: we would never become one of those people who "let themselves go" in a domestically loving relationship. In fact we are determined to battle the odds and triumph over the hurtles and come out ripped, stacked, buff and all around exuding of hotness and radiant health.

You have to understand, the odds are against us. Akiva owns a cookie company with a day time job of working as a rep for a local bread company. Both of us fought with weight for most of our younger years. We finally got it together and then we met...you can only imagine what two foodies do when love is in the air! We are the butter on each others bread, the chili cheese on a hot dog and the cream inside each others cannolies. Comprende?

Okay, okay, we must admit to our readers that this challenge is not the raw food, vegan, gluten free , dairy free, taste free, low cal diet that you might have already suspected. The objective is to embark on an exclusively Trader Joe's prepackaged food regimen. Why Trader Joe's you ask? Its simple, Trader Joe's offers a fast, simple and affordable shopping and eating experience. We both work long hours and as much as we love to cook our own meals, Trader Joe's is the expedient alternative. Lets face it, we're more apt to stick with something simple, cheaper and prepackaged rather then conjuring some long grocery list, spending precious minutes shopping on endless aisles of overwhelming options and grueling recipes which might challenge our gourmet savviness.

So, you might be thinking, "what a bunch of prepackaged American on-the-go consumeristic bullshit." You might be right. We don't care! This is simultaneously an art project as it is a experimental change of lifestyle and hopefully for the better.

Here is the prerogative:

• Breakfast: TJ's plain oatmeal with TJ's fresh fruit or dried fruit
• Lunch: TJ's pre-made salads ( a new variety daily)
• Snack: TJ's nuts or fruits
• Dinner: TJ's frozen entrees (a new variety daily)
• Some type of exercise every day.
• Document our captivating journey.
  

Part of the fun of this is that we can't eat anything else other then TJ's salads, frozen foods and oatmeal. We are also letting Trader Joe's dictate what we're eating by virtue of getting a new salad and frozen food item by going down the aisle and picking up whatever is next in line. If we exhaust the salad selection and have eaten every one of their salads, then we will start all over again. We will literally go down the frozen food aisle and pick up the first item in the aisle then the next and then the next---whether it is a buffalo burger, pizza or chicken teriyaki. TJ's will be our frozen food guide for better or for worse.

You also might be thinking that its not necessarily healthier to eat prepackaged food at Trader Joe's...This is true and yet it is a step towards a healthier eating pattern then our current one. We are not just doing this for health but also for a fun and creative challenge.

Stay tuned for daily updates and increasingly hotter pictures of us as the month progresses


-Akiva and Tallulah