At the start of this year I made a goal to eat healthier and work on breaking my addiction to fast food.  People with addictions, no matter what type they are, know full well just how hard it is to break them.  Especially when, if you’re like me, you’re still really new to the whole “cooking for yourself” concept, and my problem is that I get really, really bored easily with just soups and sandwiches.  I will say that I make awesome chocolate chip cookies, and will be FINALLY making some green tea cookies tonight (can’t wait! I love my Stand Mixer!)  But when it comes to actual meal planning, I suck worse than a kid sucks on their favorite lollipop.

Sometimes this isn’t so bad, and if I eat up on campus I don’t have to worry about it at all, though that poses its own problems as my stomach sometimes has issues with their cooking oils/spices.  But up until last week when I had a major emotional stress break down and grabbed a pizza, I had gotten much better about my immediate reaction being “go get fast food” whenever I was hungry.  It was kind of nice not going to snag something quick and feeling kind of gross afterwards, and I noticed that I also started to move away from gnawing on my finger nails whenever stressed, as well.  And then the deep freeze happened, followed by a stressful week of horse show prep, followed by a stressful weekend of horse showing.  I back slid like crazy, though I did manage to keep from biting my nails off too badly, and I kept the urge to indulge in Bojangles down, the pressure continued to built until I finally gave in today and grabbed some fries and a sundae from Micky D’s.  Do I feel bad about backsliding?  Yeah, a little, but at the same time, I feel good that I kept it to a minimum of fries and a sundae where as before I would have gotten an entire McNugget meal or something even though I had just had lunch two hours ago.

While it might not be ideal, I have found that, with my little backslide, I’m a little happier about working on my goal because now I’ve indulged, and I can back off again and start to ignore the craving.  Will I back slide again?  Yep.  But that’s ok, I accept that it will happen and sometimes I have to indulge in that vice to get me through another rough patch.  Honestly, I’m more upset about gnawing on my fingers than I am the fast food because that took weeks to heal.  But I shall just pick up and continue to move forwards in my own fashion as I strive to better myself and my health.

Also, along with my stand mixer, my magic bullet nutrition extractor is my favorite kitchen item at the moment.  Morning consists of a blending of baby spinach, red, seeded grapes, frozen mixed berries, toasted coconut and vanilla greek yogurt, and ground flax seed.  Yum!