Day Five! I'm Alive!

Today is the fifth day of my new eating habits. I'm doing quite well and have yet to really struggle with cravings for sugar, yeast, or junk. Are y'all familiar with Pinterest? If not, you need to hop over there and request an invite to participate. It's been revolutionary for my eating habits, my business, and my level of organization! Sure, sure, you can get mired down in all the "impossibly detailed crafty crazy" pins but as far as planning my meals (and my photo sessions!) goes... nothing rivals its visual bookmark genius.

Last night I enjoyed a mostly paleo friendly version of lettuce wraps which I gleaned from a "paleo" search on Pinterest and it was completely delicious. They seriously tasted like the PF Changs version I adore. Why "almost" paleo friendly, you ask? In my experience, most huge shifts in eating habits, unless you have unlimited finances to spend on stocking your pantry immediately (I do not), have a good week or two of an adjustment period. There's always that ONE ingredient you're missing when preparing a meal and substitution must happen. Last night it was regular soy sauce. I will have to find a paleo friendly substitute but in the mean time I'm not overly worried about a few minor variations. That may seem less than fully committed to some, so let me explain:

I'm a recovering perfectionist. When beginning something new in the past, especially something monumental like completely changing my eating and exercising habits and trying to fit something totally new into my life, I've often been very hard on myself and have required strict and perfect adherence to that new regime for the onset. This makes me feel like I'm "doing it right" and have successfully pre-jumped all those difficult hurdles that everyone else has to face. This, of course, isn't even close to the truth so when I do a half-pike off the back of the wagon my shame and humiliation are that much worse. Rather than picking myself up and admitting that I'm human and I'm going to screw up, I'll just quit to save myself the horror of failure. For some reason I considered quitting to be better than failure. Odd but true. Actually, this goes for many of the 'new' things I've tried in my life, which is why I have a long string of jobs, hobbies, and people I've started and then "quit" shortly thereafter. One misstep, one screw up, one failure and I tell myself that I may as well stop now because clearly, clearly, I am not going to be able to do this right. Better to not do it at all than to do it imperfectly.

In order to combat this insanity (and believe me as someone who's been dealing with this mindset my entire life, it can absolutely drive one insane) I have had to learn to back off and allow myself to be an imperfect creature. I must give myself room to stretch into this new lifestyle. Does that make it okay to give myself license to go on a three day carb binge? No, of course not. However, said three day carb binge is also not an excuse to throw my hands up, declare that I will never, ever get this right, and go back to my old eating habits, and live with chronic illness for the rest of my life. I may never understand why I have come to believe I am supposed to be above human frailness. I will continue to combat that mindset for my lifetime, I'm sure. But if I need to use some soy sauce to make a delicious meal because I've already been to the store twice and I'm starving and I just need to make this food.... I've deemed that part of the learning process. Surely my gut is much happier now that, for five days, it's only invaders have been three teaspoons of regular sugar, a packet of regular mayo, and a couple teaspoons of soy sauce? Compared with constant, all day inundation by gut irritants and empty carbs---- I'm okay with the deviations from perfection.

My official weigh and measure stats are being added to the link list at the top of the page. I'm considering adding meals and recipes, as well, but I'd love to hear feedback. Are you interested in seeing/hearing about/learning how to prepare the foods that I'm eating? It's quite a lot of effort so if you have no interest and just want to hear my random ramblings, let me know. Or, if you'd be down with starting something like this yourself or you're just curious what the crazy lady is eating... let me know that, too, in the comments section down below.

I feel fantastic both physically and mentally. I've been super, super sore from intense work outs and took yesterday off completely. I have a lot of "desk" time today because I have a lot of editing to finish to prepare for an ordering session and disk delivery. Perhaps I'll stop every 30 minutes and do some push ups and squats then take a nice stroll this evening before my brother and sister-in-law come over for dinner? We're seeing Prometheus tonight at the theater and man is that buttered popcorn going to be hard to resist!!! My sweetheart has threatened to sit on the other side of my brother so I can't reach the bag. I lurve him. ;-)

Until next time!
Chantel