Monday, March 19, 2012

Balancing Act: I Am What I Eat

Quick correction to the last post: I was on Day 28, not 27! That's a good mistake.

One thing I've come to realize throughout this journey is that my eating choices and habits are direct reflections of my life balance and imbalance. I am what I eat, essentially, so if I am feeling chaotic, I'll eat something that resembles just that. If I'm feeling great and happy and stable, I choose the foods to follow that as well. It gets really tricky when I'm stressed out because I won't put eating correctly (or sometimes, even eating at all) as a priority to the task at hand. If I have a dress that takes 6 hours to complete and I literally only have 6 hours, I won't even "waste" time to use the restroom much less feed myself anything substantial. Those times may be ahead of me in the future, too, but my hope is that I will learn some balance in all areas of my life to maintain a healthy lifestyle all around.

Before this juice fast, I could eat almost anything packaged or processed, mostly due to their nostalgic value. My favorite babysitter growing up would give us Vienna sausages, highly processed cheese, Chef Boyardee, Easy Mac, etc. and I loved it! I thought it was great! Even in recent history, I would make a snap decision to get a large order of onion rings from Sonic just because the craving hit me. I'd eat them with ranch, and I'm pretty sure Sonic puts sugar in their batter. (Breading doesn't normally taste that sweet!) Afterwards, I had zero energy and I felt really gross for consuming something that was fried, fattening, and sugar-coated. Often, I would need a nap afterwards so my body could cope with the shock to my system. Truthfully, though, I could probably eat some of that stuff today. But do I really want to? That's a big fat HELL NO, but honestly, is the rest of fast food any better? Would I grab a burger and fries from some place like P. Terry's? Maybe. They're pretty delicious, and even though they are touted as a "healthy fast food," I'm not sure that's a place I need to go when I'm in a bind. Luckily, there's Snap! Kitchen, which I forget about too often, and Whole Foods and Central Market both have prepared foods areas I can grab from if I'm in a hurry. Thundercloud and Subway aren't the worst, but I do have to watch that I don't just put a ton of meat and cheese on a sub with a little bit of lettuce and call it a meal. I'm hoping to train my body to crave more plant fuel than animal or bread fuel, mainly as a result of the past 34 days of feeling amazing and full of good energy. Oh, and another cool, relatively mindless alternative to fast foods: Juice! I have virtually no excuse to resort to processed, pre-packaged foods again because I know that I can live off of juice if I need a meal, and juicing takes only a few minutes.

Balance is really important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and the connection to food is absolutely related to my daily life. I look forward to re-learn healthy choices as each day progresses and to realize that I am in control of my future through every single healthy, nutritious, delicious bite - or sip!

1 comment:

Jason said...

thanks for sharing Anslee! I'm excited for you and glad you're feeling good. I think that these are some of the biggest steps that our culture at large can make towards healthier lifestyles - cutting out refined carbohydrates and sugar, sodium, and switching to whole grains and fresh fruit and veggies. combined with a small amount of regular aerobic excercise, I think this would eradicate a good amount of our country's health issues.