Redefining Failure...

So it started controlled. A date on Saturday night. Then Sunday came with eating too many dried banana chips and cashews. Then Monday's late class resulted in a McDonalds run. Now Tuesday held promise of Chinese food.

Not kidding.
It's like a double life! Eating healthy ALL day just to blow it on a ridiculous craving.
But we're done with that...

Now hardcore Whole30 people will tell you to restart. So, my Whole30 would become a Whole48 or something ridiculous... We're not.

This is not failure. I was chastising myself tonight in my typical way- when I just suddenly stopped. Is it merely "cheating" the plan if I'm LEARNING something each time?

The lessons we learned last night and tonight were that those "food like substances" were not food. They did not look, taste, feel, or smell anything like what our bodies wanted.

I had one glass of diet pepsi tonight, the first in 17 days- I feared before that it would set me off and I wouldn't be controllable... I "refilled" with WATER. Me! Refilled with WATER!

Yesterday, I barely could eat the 10 piece McNuggets and Shamrock Shake (no fries).... ME! The girl who several weeks ago could EASILY destroy 50 McNuggets, a large french fry, a huge diet coke, and some kind of milkshake AS A MEAL.
...that's not even the worse part... I could eat all of that, and think it tasted good.

I guess the point of this post, and me showing my failures to the world- are that they are only failures if I pick up another bottle of diet coke, drive through McDonald's, or Chinese, or anywhere that I know doesn't support my healthy eating lifestyle.... They are not failures if I learn and move on. My 30 days is not going to restart. Perhaps in a year, I'll do another Whole30 (or whenever really), and look back at this first time and think about how goofy I was thinking ____ was okay, and really it's not... but I'm not there yet.

I'm at the point where I realize a McNugget is a sponge between two pieces of cardboard, Chinese buffets don't have any real flavor, a Big Mac holds nothing to my homemade meatballs, bread doesn't taste like anything at all.... and more than all of that- that those emotional bonds that I held so dearly for all of my life really are the root of the temptation/cheat. The flavors I thought should be there were really the spices of Sadness, Joy, Rejection, Excitement, Loneliness, etc... and those emotions masked the fact that those foods are not real food. They are "food like product".

So, cheat every once in a while... but if you do it, STOP and TASTE. Taste the food you are actually eating, and separate it from the emotion you are trying to feel- or trying to push away.

For Andy and I- we're giving up on "chEating Out" (haha, get it?)- because even after the tummy aches and digestive pains, we realize that while there ARE good choices and places to go- the places we WANT and MISS most, don't hold the flavors and tastes our bodies crave.

peace, x.