The past few weeks have not been good. I have had soda, fried foods, fast foods, and followed no eating schedule at all. In other words, I haven’t been eating clean. I’ve been doing this to be healthy, but I’ve also been trying to lose a little weight along the way as well. It was actually starting to work, too, but now I’m just sort of stuck. I’ve figured out that, for me at least, there are a few things that have gotten in my way:
– Time There are a couple of facets to this. First of all, if I have a busy day, I don’t have time to stop and cook meals. There’s prep work, cooking itself, cleaning, and eating. If I have an hour to eat lunch, by the time I do all of that, I have five minutes to eat. I know there are quick meals, but that’s where the second part of this comes in: laziness. That’s right, I said it. When I’m hungry, I want to eat right away. That means a trip down the street to Chick-fil-A is much easier and faster than cooking a meal. The trick to avoiding this is planning in advance, I know. That can be difficult too.
– Travel It’s one thing to pack healthy snacks in a cooler (which I still haven’t done), but what do you do about meals? I know that it’s possible to eat clean-ish things in restaurants, but if you live where I do, most of your “right off the highway” options are fast food and other greasy things. And isn’t that part of the fun of a road trip anyway? There are times when I could have packed healthy snacks, but I chose to get a soda and have a horribly unhealthy snack anyway.
– Parties Oh, the summer cookout. Burgers, hot dogs, chicken, mayonnaise-filled dishes… you get the idea. At a party, there are virtually no healthy options unless you hover around the vegetable tray. The whole point of a party is to eat the junk, right? And sometimes it’s fine to indulge, but in party season, whether it be summer or Christmas, the parties and the junk abound.
I’m not trying to make excuses. This is just what’s been happening. I always start my day really well with a healthy breakfast, but it’s been going downhill from there. When I first started this eat clean diet lifestyle, I went 100% in and lost three pounds in a week. But then life things got in the way, and it became difficult to stick with all the time. I keep thinking about “starting over” all the time, which I guess is pretty typical with diets, but I was hoping that eating clean would be different. Well, all I can do is keep thinking about going forward – onward and upward, right? I’ll get there eventually. I hope.
Erin's Eatery 