I know this might come as a surprise to all (three? four??) of my readers, but Lean Eating isn’t all rainbows and unicorns and skittles (actually, no skittles at all). There are parts of it that I’ve struggled with, for sure, and I’m still kind of feeling my way around how to get it done.
As I alluded to in my last post, I’ve been faring better with the mental habits than the physical habits. Changing what I shovel into my mouth cuts surprisingly close to the bone — who knew that I could be attached to certain foods? Or feel such resistance when I was told to clear them out of my house?
And this translates into me only haphazardly following the three big food-related habits that I’ve been given: lean protein at every meal, 5 servings of vegetables a day and making smart carb choices. Remember all those happy green check marks that I work so hard to get? Well, my compliance rate is certainly not at 100% anymore (and I haven’t yet missed a workout, so you do the math) and there’s a part of me that thinks, “Well, that’s okay. How much is it going to hurt if I don’t follow the food rules to the letter?”
Some of it is that the habits are hard to follow all the time. They require planning and at times making decisions that are incredibly inconvenient and my laziness will get in the way. Some of it is that I feel like there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be 100% compliant. Perhaps it goes back to something I talked about quite awhile ago — the idea that by not following things 100%, I’ll have something to blame if this doesn’t work out the way that I want it to.
I’ve just recently been starting to see progress, but i wonder how much more progress I could be making if I were doing things the right way and really trying to follow the plan as closely as possible?
It gets complicated because I’ve always believed that what you eat isn’t nearly as important as how much you eat — calories in/calories out being the main equation to monitor for weight loss. And shifting my eating habits (more than just eating less and eating generally healthy, whole food) and having huge successes would mean that what I’ve believed for a long time maybe doesn’t hold water like I thought it did. Have I been wrong all these years?
I’m rambling, I know. It’s been a great day, but I’m a little tired, and these are things that have been on my mind — and probably need more fleshing out than what I’ve done here today. So I’ll leave y’all with those thoughts for now. Good night, sleep well and see y’all tomorrow.
