Yesterday I was blessed with a tremendous gift of pouring boiling green tea all over my hand. You read that right. I am thankful I burned myself with tea and it will all make sense in just a moment. But, like all great stories, it doesn’t start there. Let’s start a few days earlier…
Falling off track with your healthy real food diet can be devastating.We never intend to throw ourselves under the bus, do we? No, it usually starts with just one treat after dinner. Then, our family wants to go out for ice cream (it’s just one, right?). Then, we remember there’s just 1/2 a chocolate bar left in the house and it might as well be eaten now too. Then, as we go watch The Dark Knight Rises for the third time, we eat the popcorn… again (and maybe order some peanut M&M’s…).
Can you relate?
This exact scenario happened to me just this past week and I was surprised at how quickly those little things here and there added up to a whopper of a problem. And it wasn’t weight gain.
Can I be completely vulnerable with you for a moment?
I struggle with splurging too. I LIKE chocolate and Peanut M&Ms and ice cream and tons of potatoes and cereal and Cokes and brownies and gallons of milk! I would eat them every day, all day if I could. They taste good! They are instantly gratifying. Sometimes, I even literally feel better after eating such things. After all, it’s just a little here and there, right?
What woke me up this past weekend was not an arbitrary number on a scale (I’ve sworn off the scale this month). It was not even the fact that I craved sugar, ice cream, anything sweet.
What slapped me in the face was how irritable I felt Sunday afternoon! The slightest deviation from my perfect reality sent me into a tailspin of rage for no apparent reason. As I ground my teeth and thought about how amazing it would feel to run full-speed into a brick wall, a small part of my brain struggled to regain control.
There was no concentration on writing, or encouraging, or anything else I had on my list to do. There was only the irritation.
Think positively, I thought. This isn’t you. This is just all the crap you’ve eaten. This is what you used to feel like every day (no wonder you were so moody). You can overcome this. You can be flexible.
But NOTHING helped.
I couldn’t think straight. No focus. I felt puffy, bloated, and overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom (seriously). And to top it all off.. I medicated this feeling with an avocado popsicle from La Michoacana that just happened to live in my freezer (which really helped the situation).
It wasn’t until I accidentally poured boiling green tea all over my hand that I realized how inconsequential all of the imagined injustices I dwelt on really were. In that moment, I forgot everything else and could only focus on the fact that my hand felt like it was on fire.
As I snapped out of my irritable frustrated mood, I realized the repercussions of my string of poor eating decisions. I haven’t felt irritated like that in years. I’m not blaming dessert or calling it ‘the devil’ (don’t mis-hear me!). It was the fact that I was out of integrity with my eating. I said yes to foods I knew I didn’t want going in. I ate things I intentionally planned to avoid.
Hopefully, you won’t need to burn your hand to snap out of your low points. Maybe you can just learn from my example instead. I fell off track big time and my body couldn’t function optimally as a consequence. My irritability wasn’t just feelings, or stuff that just normally happens. My irritability was a direct result of the quality of foods I put in my body.
If we don’t maintain our vibrant health, we shouldn’t act surprised when our body starts falling apart. (click here to tweet this)
Fortunately, I have a few strategies to get right back on track without feeling guilty or spending weeks in the pit. Put these into practice the next time you fall off the bandwagon and watch that fall be a blip on your screen!
Your Get Healthy Assignment:
- Fix some green tea (not for burning!). Green tea is a natural appetite suppressant and will help curb your carb cravings.
- Assess the issue. What happened? Why did you fall off track? Were you hungry? Unprepared? Giving in? Awareness is 90% of the solution!
- Schedule your splurges.
- NO judgment! We’re not in the guilt-trip-never-do-that-again club here! That’s so last month, old us. Instead, what did you learn from this experience?
- Take the next right step. At your next meal, return to the Jump-Start Formula.
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