Feed Your Head

I just read a great article. You can read it, too, here, if you wish. And then run for the hills the next time one of these chain restaurants tries to trick you with clever, marketing double-speak.

I promised I wouldn't be come obsessed with health and wellness and blog about it all the time, but I have to tell you, I'm thinking about it a lot. I agree that a cleaner, healthier lifestyle is not for everyone. If you love Ho-Hos and watching TV and potato chips more than anything, I wouldn't tell you to stop...that is all for you. Sometimes, even knowing what I know, it feels like health is not for me, when I'm lazily watching TV, letting myself get too busy with things for others, or there is something else I want to do, like sew things or make jewelry.

But I also have found that once I get started, if I can just get started, the joy and energy I feel after exercising or making quality meals from scratch makes it all worth it.

I'm learning to make this my every day and finding it very fulfilling. And even relaxing (as I mentioned desperately needing in my last post!) when I approach it the right way.

When you, as Susan Powter keeps reminding us, take the time to put high quality food into your body and move in oxygen, you are improving your lifestyle.

For this week, I've cooked every meal from scratch, exercised for 30 minutes every day and avoided stuff I know is bad for me. In my food bag for today? A travel mug with a smidge of organic turbinado sugar in it so that I don't have to use the white refined stuff in my coffee at work, a clementine, an organic apple, a raw potato, a bag of roasted, in-shell pistachios (I'll farm these 8 ounces out over a week) and a container of leftover veggie soup I made from scratch the other night. Pistachios and coffee for breakfast. A clementine mid-morning. Soup and microwaved potato for lunch. Apple for the webinar I have to attend later on.

The only processed food I've had this week is a bit of cheese and sour cream on a baked potato, a slice of rye bread, powdered creamer in my coffee and some Szechuan sauce that I used in preparing last night's dinner for Steinvic and I. I'm on day four of this and I have to say...it's easy when you consider the alternative: continuing to feel the drain of energy and not looking or feeling the way I want to and deserve to look and feel.

So, while I haven't eliminated processed foods completely, I'd say I've cut them waaaaay back and that is a great start. I'm not giving myself permission to keep using processed items or to not exercise daily, but I am also aware that making ALL the changes at one time is a way to set myself up to fail (except for quitting smoking...that is an all or nothing with me and I'm happy to say I am no longer doing that. Even if I did have a random freak out last weekend where I really wanted to smoke, which I just rode out and then thanked my lucky stars the next day that I hadn't.)

How can I not get a little obsessed about something that has the potential to improve my life in every way? It's not a resolution, it's a revelation.