Days 8, 9, 10 & 11 (friday-monday)

The weekend passed by WAY too fast! Can't believe I'm about to start Day 12 already! Time to tell you how I did...I made it through most of the weekend being "good". Basically I ate well Friday, Saturday and MOST of Sunday, and didn't do well today. In my head I kept saying that I was "bad" and feeling bad for what I ate...but then I started thinking that although I'm doing a 90-day challenge, the changes I'm making are lifelong, not just a short-term fix. I will have "good" and "bad" days. I will have days where I don't stick to my plan at all, and days where my eating is pristine. It's all a long and gradual process. A complete nutritional makeover and I can't expect it to happen overnight without incident. And as much as I can make these logical points, I still have a hard time ACCEPTING this and continue to get angry at myself for making mistakes. I feel that once I can actually realize that I'm only human, that I make mistakes, and that a small slip won't set me back than I know I can make better progress. Instead of yelling at myself for the trip-ups, I should be commending myself for sticking to it, more so than I have in the past.

This weekend was very hard for me. I didn't have any problem eating well on Friday, and I drank lots of water. I didn't have any problems eating saturday either. Sunday started off really well, and since I knew we were eating out at a group dinner I planned to allow myself to have something "bad" when we went out. However, I think knowing that I'd be eating bad later allowed me to make some exceptions and snack poorly on sunday as well. Today (Monday) was a travel day and although I planned to eat well I just couldn't stick with it. Here is what I ate all weekend:

Friday:

Breakfast:

-Kashi whole grain bar

Snack:

-Sugar free chocolate pudding

Lunch:

-Beef stew over brown rice

Snack:

-Sliced green apples with peanut butter

Dinner:

-Chicken parm (made with homemade fresh tomato sauce, low fat mozzarella cheese, and baked (not breaded) skinless chicken

Saturday:

Breakfast:

-Plain oatmeal with a sliced banana in it

Snack:

-Chocolate pudding

Lunch:

-Turkey, lowfat swiss, fat free mayo, spinach and tomato on whole wheat bread

Snack:

-Fat free strawberry greek yogurt with blueberries

Dinner:

-Homemade thin crust pizza on wheat flatbread with fresh tomato sauce, lowfat mozzarella, peppers onions and hot sausage

-1 sweet sausage link

Late-night food:

-pb&j on white bread at around 2am (we were drinking)

Drinks:

-1 ginger ale with captain morgan rum

-3 ginger ale with vodka

Sunday:

Breakfast:

-Very small portion scrambled eggs (made with whole milk)

-3 strips turkey bacon

-small portion fresh homemade potatoes w/ peppers & onions

-glass of orange juice

Snack:

-Sugar free chocolate pudding with a banana

Lunch:

-Veggie burger with ketchup, tomato slices, spinach and onions on wheat

Snack(?)

-Barrel candy from a country store

Dinner:

-6 buffalo wings w/ blue cheese

-22oz beer

-cup of sprite

Monday:

Breakfast:

-Kashi whole grain bar

Lunch:

-Pulled pork sandwich (not eaten from the night before)

-Plain white spaghetti with oil & sprinkled breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese

-handful of olives

-slices of italian bread

Snack:

-4oz low fat ice cream with some mini marshmallows

Dinner:

-Mexican restaurant: 1 chicken burrito (filled only with chicken), 1 beef taco with cheese & lettuce, refried beans, rice and green pepper sauce

-Unsweetened iced tea

Drinks:

-Cafe au lait

So that was my doozie of a weekend. I'm trying to convince myself that although I made poor choices between 10pm saturday and 10pm tonight, it is OK to just keep moving forward instead of focusing on what I did wrong. I want to start tomorrow fresh and ready to move ahead. I want to wake up, make my daily food, work and come home and work out. In that order, just like that. No excuses, no feeling tired, no "not feeling up to it". I don't want this weekend to stick out in my head and cause me anguish. I'm only human, and this is a lifestyle change that will take a while to grow accustomed to. It is unrealistic to think I will never have an alcoholic beverage again just as it's not realistic to think I will never go out to eat, either. I definitely have found a pattern in my weakness, though, as I notice when I'm alone I don't do as poorly as when I'm around friends who are eating whatever they want. Food for me is definitely something that helps me to connect socially with my peers...going to a country general store in the middle of nowhere and eating homemade barrel candy is part of a vacation experience, and I feel torn between the need to enjoy being my young self and trying to unnaturally control myself in a situation where it's odd to not partake in certain food-oriented activities. It's a hard balance to maintain and I definitely have not figured out how to take control of it. I often feel like I didn't have enough peer socialization as a child, mostly stemming from the fact that I didn't have anybody to hang out with until much later on in life. It's almost as if I'm making up for it now and I'm trying to squeeze in all the fun until I get pushed into the big 3-0. It's unfortunate that to definitively have a good time you need to involve alcohol, and while I know there are plenty activities I love where food isn't involved most hangouts revolve around hors d'oeuvres, share-worthy platters, beer and pizza pies. I don't understand how I'm supposed to walk into a football party with a tupperware filled with brown rice and grilled chicken and not feel sad for myself. Sad that I can't enjoy a party on the same level as others simply because I can't eat the chips in the bowl. Am I supposed to cut myself off from that kind of exposure? Or be able to somehow push the temptation down repeatedly until I'm just not tempted anymore? Like I said this is a process and for each step I take more questions and worries arise. I hope to resolve them all as I go along, and to learn how to make this nutritional overhaul stick for the long-haul.