Hola amigos!
Thought I’d check in with you all as I enjoy my lunch [salad of organic field greens, leftover goat cheese from my guacamole recipe, green onions, unsweetened dried cranberries and toasted pecans...YUM!] and share some thoughts on our first week! I have to be honest with you all. It didn’t go as planned. It all started Tuesday (I know! so soon…) when we didn’t plan ahead and Ryan left the house in the morning without his lunch and dinner for the day. He had class that evening after work, and came home starving…Cherry Coke in hand. I gave him a look of death of course, but could I blame him? Not really. When you don’t plan ahead and allow yourself to get hungry between meals, chances are you’re going to go for the ‘good’ stuff. So we quickly made him a real food worthy meal, even though it was 10:00 pm. Wednesday we made sure he left with appropriate meals in tow for his long day, and it was a success!
Now, I have another confession. Thursday, Friday, even Saturday didn’t go as planned either. Which leads me to something I’ve been considering over the past several days. In a REAListic life, should my relationship with food be simply one of consuming for fuel, or enjoying for fun?
I came down with a flu bug on Thursday and was in no shape to cook a healthy meal. While we had plenty of options that would have been more appropriate than the one we chose (Wendy’s…yikes), the fact is I wasn’t eating much and was willing to consume anything that sounded remotely appetizing and easy. Of course, that resulted in a downward spiral of taking Subway to a party on Friday, eating and drinking what we wanted while we were out with friends on Saturday, and celebrating my mom’s 55th birthday with a burger and fries on Sunday…all with the sentence ‘we’ll start again on Monday’ practically on repeat between the two of us.
Now listen, as guilty as I made myself feel with each french fry I put past my lips this weekend, I’m not going to tell you I feel bad about it today. I’m going to tell you I plan to do better this week. Starting this morning. And I’m going to tell you that I recognize if we are going to succeed in this challenge, we are going to need to take it seriously. Quite frankly, we didn’t last week. There were successes: packing those meals for Ryan to take in the morning resulted in him getting through the day eating the way he intended. I did really well with each meal until I was knocked on my ass Thursday with that flu bug. AND we successfully planned real food meals when we were at home to eat them. Oh, plus I lost 4 lbs! But obviously, there were also quite a few failures.
We did have fun this weekend. And, as you all know, with celebrations and socializing comes a slew of tough food choices for beginners like us. I approached things last week with the mindset that I would try to consider food as fuel. Just what I needed to keep my body healthy and happy…nothing more, nothing less. But as I thought about it throughout the last several days, I realized I LOVE food too much to think about it that way. And that’s ok. That’s good even (I’m a damn good cook/hostess with the mostess)! What I need to work on instead, is considering food as a ‘cherry on top’ (pun intended) rather than the entire sundae. Is the food the reason I have my family and friends over for a cook out or go out to celebrate a birthday? Nope. The company is. Building and maintaining relationships with the people closest to me is the reason I’m at the event–the food is just an added bonus.
I think if I learn to approach food as both fuel AND fun, I’ll be on my way to making those tough food decisions while we’re out with friends, a little easier to swallow.
Here I am enjoying this past weekend with my sister-in-law to be, Michelle.
Eat Real. Be Real.
Rachel
