Week 4 Report

I didn't get a video made this week.  I'm several days late reporting because I kept hoping to do a video, but between school holidays and kids being home sick, I just couldn't get it in.

Sometimes it feels really easy to eat this way, and sometimes--it feels REALLY hard.  Sometimes my food is so delicious I'm over the moon happy with it.  At other times, my energy is depleted, my willpower is depleted, my stress levels are high, and I walk into the kitchen to find a hot carry-out pizza on the counter, or chicken nuggets, or mozzarella sticks, or fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies...and then, the real battle begins to rage in my mind.  Last week, the nuggets and mozzarella sticks got the best of me, but 10 minutes ago, I walked away from the hot pizza on the counter...It was WAAAAY harder than it should have been!  I was SO close to digging in! I'm here now to write in the hope it will help me stay strong in my resolve to choose healthy food for my body. I hope it will help me forget the siren call of the pizza and remember what I want most.  Would one bite or one slice hurt me?  Probably not in the big scheme of things...but I know it usually doesn't work that way.  Once I start to make exceptions and break the bright lines, it gets easier and easier to do it the next time and the next, and before I know it, I'm back where I started, doing the yo-yo lose/gain cycle I've been on for years and I don't want that anymore.  It's just hard to remember in the moment of temptation that I want long-term health and wellness more than I want the shot of dopamine that pizza would give me.  It's really shocking how hard it is sometimes.  Thankfully, I don't feel like this all the time, and that's good to remember. Feelings pass....wait it out...breathe.

The big question you might be asking is why do I have those kinds of food in my house?  It's a great question and I'm not sure I have a great answer.  When I tried to change to a plant-based diet years ago, I tried to get my whole family on board.  Dealing with hungry children who hated everything I made, and desperately wanted to eat anywhere but home, added to my stress.  As I decided to commit to doing this again, I just didn't feel ready to engage in that battle again.  In addition, I feel strapped for time almost every moment and convenience foods make my life easier.  I can pack my kids' lunches in 5 minutes with a bunch of pre-packaged foods, although I cringe a bit doing it.  The longer I eat healthy, the more I consider taking on the battle of getting the whole family on board, but I guess I'm just not ready yet.  I want to be the example and show I can stick to it myself first.  I guess that means I'm choosing to be surrounded by temptation constantly...I'll be thinking about this more. For the record, I didn't have anything to do with getting the pizza!

In spite of giving into temptation a couple of times last week, I didn't give up, and that's saying something!  I ate animal products for the first time since January 1st and that made me feel pretty low.  Physically it didn't bother me, but I was disappointed with myself for breaking my own commitment.  Fortunately, I watched a really great video from Brian Johnson called Habits 101 and it really helped me to not despair.  I was able to look at those moments as tiny setbacks and not let them define me or rob me of the progress I have made.  Woot, Woot!  Here are just a few nuggets of wisdom I gathered from that video:

1) We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence is not an act, it's a habit.  (I gave myself credit for making good choices repeatedly and tried not to dwell on the few times I didn't).

2) Shaming yourself is the quickest way to destroy your willpower.  (Boy, I had to remind myself of that a lot!).

3) Get your mind right.  We need to have an "experiment mindset."  We shouldn't freak out when things don't go well and say "I'm an idiot!  I'm a loser!"  Instead, we should examine it as data and say, "Hmm...why did that happen?  How could we do things differently to get a different result next time?"  We shouldn't look at our actions with a win or lose mentality.  Instead, we should think--we either win or LEARN.  That is a huge one for me as I use the word "fail" too often in my vocabulary about my efforts at various things.  Mistakes are an opportunity to learn.  Let me say that again: Mistakes are an opportunity to learn.  Thinking that way helped me carry on last week instead of bailing out on all my efforts because of one chicken nugget!  Ha, ha, where would that get me?

I have also been listening to a parenting course from Aha Parenting and it is helping me in the food area too.  Dr. Markham talks about the importance of learning how to regulate our big emotions instead of acting on them.  It's good stuff and I'm sure I'll be sharing nuggets of wisdom from her in the future.  I'm out of time right now.

I haven't been talking about DDP yoga because I only managed to do it one week!  It's not that it was too hard, it's just that I need to figure out how to work it into my day.  We were doing it as a family at night, but then things came up at night, we had company visit, and that was the end of that.  I walk on the treadmill in the morning, and I could add DDP yoga to my morning exercise, but it's adding one more thing to my brimming plate.  I could do yoga instead of the treadmill, but that makes it harder to reach my daily step goal which I really like to do.  I'm going to analyze all of this as data and figure out a way to make it happen! :)

Last, but not least, I lost another pound.  Down 10 pounds now.  Hooray!

I'll leave with a quote from Rip Esselstyn which made me laugh because I could so relate:

"Moderation is a dangerous and insidious slippery slope that'll have you back to your old ways before you can say triple bacon cheeseburger with mayo."