Abandonment Issues

Do you abandon books?

Do you ever get two or three chapters in and decide, "This book is too terrible to endure any longer?"

Or, do you trudge through on principle?

Even though you recognize early on that the book within your grasp is not for you, still you power on for fear of hurting that poor book's feelings, or worse, for fear of admitting there was a book you didn't finish reading.

I know the struggle.

I liken my 100 Days of Real Food challenges to such book abandonment issues.

If you couldn't tell from my first post on this subject, I do take a little issue with the obsession with real food. I think it is important to eat healthy and necessary to be aware of what we put in our bodies, but I feel like the trend now is to be so concerned with healthy living that it becomes an unhealthy obsession.

I was starting to grow that way with this challenge. At the start, I said I wasn't going to be an insane stickler to the rules. Still I found myself anxious over maintaining each week's guideline. I was crossed between getting annoyed at myself for wanting to be a rebel and getting annoyed at such over the top rules including my two least favorite: only natural sweeteners and 100% whole grains.

When we went to Chicago I told myself ahead of time that there would be no Real Food concerns that week. This was with every intention that I would bounce back into the 100 Days of Real Food challenges when my vacation ended.

I could blame that week. I could say it threw me off. I could say that I'm just now getting my eating habits back together and regaining focus of the mini challenges. But instead I've chosen to be realistic.

This book stinks.

So, I am abandoning it.

While this was never a diet, I feel that too many people struggle with diets because they choose diets/ways of eating that do not match their reality. Instead of living a balanced way of eating, people are torturing themselves to follow unrealistic and unnecessary diets in hopes of results and possibly even happiness.

For me, it is about the experience, the challenge of it all. I wanted to eat healthier, so I chose to follow an extreme program, one that overall I didn't agree with and couldn't stand. I knew from the start that giving up all sweeteners was going to be an issue for me; I knew that going 100% whole grain only was going to drive my palate insane, but still I said I would do it.

Thank God I went away for a week. Was it the bakeries, the burgers, or the pizza that set me straight? I’ll never know. I just knew I wasn't going to continue with something that denied me of flavors and culinary masterpieces a moment longer.

100 Days of Real Food? Filled with rules and restrictions that could make your head explode?

No way!

Instead I’ve chosen to have a Lifetime of Good Food. This can’t be accomplished by starving yourself and it can’t be accomplished by setting insanely strict standards. Because ‘good’ doesn’t merely mean good-for-you, no it covers far more than simply the healthiness of food.

To maintain a Lifetime of Good Food, here are a few of my standards. A few noteworthy elements of the 100 Days of Real Food mini pledges (challenges) have been reworked to match a lifestyle that promotes happy healthy eating.

A Lifetime of Good Food: 

Happy Healthy Eating Habits

1. Stop eating when you feel full. 
2. Incorporate fruits and vegetables into meals as often as possible.
3. Drink mostly water, but you know you’ll never pass up a cookies n’ cream milkshake if it’s staring you in the face.
4. Try new foods! Never cooked with fresh artichokes? Grab one and try it out! Don’t feel compelled to do it with every meal, but do it as often as you can.
5. Eat locally grown/raised food when you can. Can you buy your eggs at the Farmer’s Market down the street? Do it! Does the house around the corner sell tomatoes? Buy ‘em there! But don’t go out of your way or cause yourself more stress on a weeknight shopping trip just for the sake of eating local.
6. Read labels. If there are tons of things listed that you don’t know, look for a different option.
7. Don’t read labels. If you really want Doritos, you better go buy some Doritos!
8. Plan ahead. The best way to ensure you aren't scrambling to throw something together at each meal is to plan ahead. 
9. Make good choices. Sugary drinks, decadent cakes and cookies, deep fried foods, sure they all spell L-O-V-E for me. But they also spell health problems and thick thighs. Keep ‘em to the minimum.
10. Cheat. Regularly. At least once a week. Pick one day/meal that you are going to throw care to the wind and indulge. Then get back on track with your Lifetime of Good Food habits.  

Note: This post is not meant to condemn anyone who is a fanatic about eating healthy. It is simply meant to lift the spirits of quitters like myself who are seeking the best plan for their lifestyle. This is my best plan. And even this plan, as simple and lacking of every possible get fit quick formula there is, requires dedication and determination.*

*And the occasional bag of Doritos.**

**Sorry, I desperately wanted to further emphasize the alliteration I started there.

And Now For Something...Completely Different

I told you something new and exciting was coming.

It turns out I needed a little me time before I decided to commit to blogging about my new venture. Hence, my short absence.

I have been following the 100 Days of Real Food blog for about a year now. In a sentence, the blog's author, Lisa Leake, her husband and two children challenged themselves to eat only real food for 100 days. Following this, Leake has continued to feed her family a diet of primarily real foods. On her blog, she offers readers a 10-day pledge* as well as meal plans and a slew of resources for eating real food. While it is certainly commendable that Leake and her family have committed to such a lifestyle, her passion goes a bit overboard to borderline obsession. It puts me in mind of a Wall Street Journal article I recently read which states in a medically eloquent way that the eating healthy obsession has actually become unhealthy for some.

*Please note: While Leake refers to these commitments as 'pledges', I call them 'challenges' at home, because Lord knows, they are challenging.

While we aren't looking to make a lifetime pledge to eating only real food or foods with only five ingredients, Hubby and I did decide it was time we started eating better. This is partially due to wanting to lose a little weight but also due to just wanting to feel better all around. If I've learned anything from doctors, proper eating is key.

We decided we would take the 10-day pledge. I'm realistic. I knew I would never, ever survive a 100-day challenge. And if you sit there thinking, it's just real foods, how hard could it be? Just check out Leake's Real Food Rules.

I was just finishing up blogging about my recipe challenge when we took the 10-day pledge. So I was a little tuckered out and surprisingly not in the mood to photograph any food I cooked.

Here, in a nutshell, is how it went:

Days 1, 2, 3: Ate only real foods. Began the day with a banana and whole wheat bread*. Lunch was a mixture of PB&J, fruits, and leftover real food dinners. Dinners were filled with veggies, pan fried chicken and fish.

*Not all whole wheat breads are equal. To find one that is actually "real" you have to search the ingredients list and/or search for the whole grains approval stamp.

Day 4: I cracked. It was a Saturday, I had been busy all morning and hadn't eaten a thing when noon rolled around. Hubby took me to Starbucks, and I was under the impression he would be cheating, too. So I ordered a caramel macchiato and a breakfast sandwich.

Then Hubby ordered a black coffee and I wanted to ring his neck like a wet towel. This proceeded to tears, a quiet car ride, a breakfast sandwich being thrown out the window, and a trip to Cracker Barrel.

Day 5 and 6: Repeated the same as Days 1-3.

Day 7 and 8: I cheated in small ways. I ate one or two food items that had only one or two "not real" additives.*

*Like sugar. Because I needed a little chocolate in my life, and no matter how they package it, chocolate bars made without delicious white sugar taste like bitter mud.

Day 9 and 10: Finished the challenge on two days of real food only.

Whew! That was a pretty large nutshell!

Despite my lack of control, I learned a lot from the ten days of attempting to eat only real food. I learned to really read food labels. I learned that I eat less when I eat real food. I also discovered, after this past week of being able to eat what I wanted, that I feel better eating real food. Maybe it is a trick of the subconscious, but I suppose it is a rather positive trick.

So what now? I'm sure you've guessed that this isn't the end of the road. Leake realizes that not everyone can jump into real food eating immediately. It is certainly a gradual process. Enter her 14-week mini pledges. Each week has a different pledge. For instance: Week 4 is "No fast food or deep-fried food". We have decided to mix the order of the pledges up and to build each week upon the next.

The next fourteen weeks on this blog I will be writing about how these pledges (challenges) are going. 

Please know that the most difficult part of this challenge will be the eventual forfeiting of sugar and white flour from my diet. Also, please know that I do not intend to keep these eating habits forever, but only to complete this challenge and instill a framework for better eating habits in my house.