Day 309 - I Win

It's important to celebrate our victories.

For about two weeks, I've been working hard to change some of my food habits. Specifically, my storage and preparation habits. I ceared the clutter from my pantry and super organized it - learning in the process that I had about 3x the space I thought I did! I bought new storage containers, and I started specifically storing things in pre-weighed portions. I even started cooking up a little extra when I made dinner, storing that away for later.

I also changed what I bought, going for whole wheat pastas, brown rice, and a mixture of fresh, frozen, and canned fruits and vegetables.

It was a lot of work. I won't kid you. And it was a lot of work I was doing even when I was tired, or when my injury was bothering me. I was even starting to feel like it was a whole lotta work for a whole lotta nothing. But then...

Yesterday I hit the wall with six hours to go. I was tired enough to fall asleep standing up, kept awake mostly by the pain in my leg from hving overdone it for the day, and I still had six hours of errands and meetings to go to.

I was crying as I dragged myself into the house after it was all over. I had no brain power for talking to my husband, or figuring out what was for dinner, and I was certainly not up for standing at the counter for an hour to chop and cook healthy veggies and meat.

Used to be, that was when I depended on Papa John to rescue me. I'd order up some comfort food and drop onto the couch to inhale my overlarge portion.

But I've been working so hard to change my habits...and it worked. I didn't even think about good ol' John. I just went to my fridge and threw some stuff together without a thought. My autopilot was in control, and I was going to eat whatever it ended up with.

Here's the win part: dinner last night was good, and it was healthy!

I ended up with whole wheat pasta with some cheese (a perfect portion, thanks to earlier work), diced chicken (left over from a double batch when I made chicken tacos) with just a little bit of low-cal teriyaki suce (not glaze!), and pears from a can.

Exciting? Not really. But it fit in perfectly with my goals - which I didn't even realize until I punched it into my calorie tracker while the pasta cooled. As a bonus, I was so perfectly within my macronutrient goals yesterday, I actually woke up two pounds lighter!

Moral of the story: put the work into changing your habits, and your habits will change the way you live.