Week 1 Day 3 - 2.23.16

My Food:

Breakfast salad

Lunch was taco lentils with rice over romaine and a small scoop of a breakfast salad I made for our friends for lunch (light on the kale, heavy on the fruit)

Dinner was baked falafel burger wrapped in romaine with mustard, oven baked fries with ketchup, green beans with mushrooms

Dessert of frozen cherries dusted with cacao powder.

I did have a cup of coffee while visiting with my friend today. Then I had a cup of decaf with flavored creamer when I got home.  Ugh with the coffee, already!

My thoughts:

Overall, good day.  I'm feeling good about my food choices today. Still need to keep working on those coffee binges. I didn't mind sharing a cuppa with a friend, but I could have easily skipped the cuppa after. David asked me to get one for him on my way home. I didn't need to get one for myself too.  Especially with the creamer.

I got myself to bed on time last night.  Hoping to do the same tonight. 

Week 1 Day 2 - 2.22.16

My Food:

Breakfast salad

His, mine, and theirs

 

For lunch we had our usual Monday Taco Salad.  I was on schedule today so I had it all prepped by 9am.  Just needed to cook up the veggies and add the beans, corn, and seasoning.

 

 

And then it happened.  Stress.  Emotion.  Emotion overkill, to tell all the truth.  And I caved.  Two slices of whole grain bread with mustard.  Down it went. :/

 

For dinner was still just so emotional.  I had two small bowls of the pasta the kids were eating. I was just too fried to come up with something more.  It was good.  The sauce had a buttery texture and taste even though it was made from cauliflower.  Great recipe here.

 

 

Evening dessert was a green apple with peanut butter and decaf black coffee.

 

My thoughts:

 

I just really stink at dealing well with stress.  Especially mothering stress.  I need a coping tool. I prayed. I breathed deep breaths.  I tried stuff. Really I did.  I need to try other stuff.  But I did NOT have the soda, chips, coffee or cookies that people were offering to me.

 

Week 1 Day 1 - 2.21.16

Food:

Breakfast - Breakfast salad
Lunch - leftover Creamy Broccoli Rice Casserole
Dinner - Buffalo Chickpea dip, carrot sticks, broccoli, corn chips and shared a chocolate bar with my guy. *ahem*

Coffee with flavored creamer at evening rehearsal

Exercise:

Family walk this morning.  Walked home from rehearsal tonight.  It's just so lovely out there. Feels like spring.

Thoughts:

I've been fighting some kind of bug. I was battling some bad stomach cramping yesterday and spent the afternoon in bed.  Today I was able to be up and out but still felt queasy and heavy-headed this afternoon.  I did perk up this evening, though, and felt great during rehearsal.

I'm not sure what kind of bug it is, but those of us that have it seem to be doing pretty well fighting it without too much interruption in life.  A little icky, a little tired, but mostly able to keep on with life.

Tomorrow is a new week. I'm looking forward to getting out for more walks and fresh air. We've got a lot of busy work to do around the house, getting ready for our next new adventure.  I'm feeling determined to keep on task with my goals:

> Tea and water, not coffee
> No snacking, fill up at meal time instead
> Work on rebuilding good habits (these and more)
> Begin giving serious prayer to the issue of emotional eating, *pray, don't pick* (at food)
> Bed by 10pm

Just some thoughts on a restful Sunday

New Challenge

Okay, so I didn't quite finish my last challenge, but I will say, I wasn't seeing the results I was hoping for while doing it, so I think I just felt defeated and gave up.

And got busy.  It's a little tricky to keep up with the soup making every day when life gets crazy.

And, well, it's gotten *really* crazy in the past few weeks.

We have a major life change coming up in the next few months. No, not a new pregnancy. (I knew you were thinking it. ;) )  So, with major stress comes major bad choices for me. Especially when it comes to food since I'm so very prone to use food as a coping mechanism. 

So, I need a new challenge. Something that will keep me excited about making good health choices as well as give me some motivation to stay away from being lazy which always leads to falling back into bad habits.

Thing is, I'm just unsure what the challenge should look like. 

I know, beyond a doubt, that my primary issue is that I need to form and build new, healthy habits.  But, building habits is hard. And, well, which ones do I start with first? Which ones are the key habits that are the foundation to the others that are messing me up? This is where I feel stuck.

Last week a friend joined me in working on tweaking two bad habits I've developed. Coffee and snacking.  I see these as pivotal to other poor habits I've got going on.

And, well, I didn't do so well at breaking the habit. But, I guess I could at least feel good about making progress.

1.  I did drink a lot LESS coffee this past week than I have been, replacing it with hot herbal tea and water.
2.  I did have LESS snacks between meals this week than I have before.
3.  I did choose better snacks, which was my goal, if I couldn't skip the snack altogether.

Okay, so instead of feeling like a failure, I'm going to call it progress.  But I'm also going to give myself a kick in the pants so I will get my head in the game and work harder on doing this the right way.

In the meantime, I'm going to make sure I'm sticking to Dr. F's 6 week plan for eating. 

For me, that typically looks like this:

Breakfast: Breakfast salad
Lunch: Head of romaine topped with other raw veggies and/or cooked legumes and a nut-based dressing
Dinner: salad, cooked veggies, starch or grain, fruit for dessert

Daily blogging and the support of a really great friend. :)