Progress

Yesterday was pretty much a write-off in terms of staying on track with clean eating. After locking ourselves out of our apartment and waiting an hour or so for our landlord to get home and rescue us, Boyfriend and I were behind on getting groceries and were famished by the time we got back. This meant that, instead of the healthy meal I had planned, I improvised and threw together a pasta concoction (made with whole wheat pasta, chicken, veggies, broth, cornstarch, spices, and a sprinkling of Parmesan - so still relatively healthy) to save time. We also indulged in an absolute glutinous amount of chocolate cake (which I had broken down and bought him as a surprise because - let's face it - a birthday just doesn't feel right without cake!) and I had a glass of wine. This morning, again, I felt the aftereffects quite acutely: an upset stomach, tiredness, fogginess, headache, lungs that felt like I had smoked a pack of cigarettes the night before (although I'm still not sure how that could possibly related to eating crap, it does seem to be correlated for me based on recent experiences)...So, I resolved to get back on the wagon this morning and do the best I can again today. We ate a good breakfast, I got busy doing laundry and started making food to bring on the out of town trip (so far, I've got homemade granola, peanut butter balls sans chocolate and sugar, and a banana nut loaf. I'm about to get started on apple coleslaw, green salad with chicken, and trail mix. We'll see how much more than that I accomplish before the day is out).

In addition to all the cooking, baking, and preparing, I managed to do a detoxing yoga sequence and WOW what a sweat. I now feel absolutely drained physically (but, oh so much better!) and I'm hoping the spinach and berry shake I just ingested will kick in with some energy boosting goodness soon. In the meantime, I thought it was the perfect time to flex my writing muscles a little via this blog post and, whilst reflecting on yesterday's and last week's diet transgressions, I started to ponder progress: what it means and what it looks like. I have to say, I used to think it was more-or-less a straight path with points along the way tracking how far you'd come or when you'd reached a certain milestone. Now I see that it's not necessarily that way. Progress to me, in this particular instance, is measured by my conscious acceptance of a few days off track punctuated by a desire and determination to eat better and exercise more regularly immediately, during, and after straying from my path. I am not beating up on myself, and my motivation is not to punish myself for "cheating." Rather, I feel that I genuinely want to take the best care of myself that I can as consistently as I can. I am not attempting to force myself to do something because I am aware that I should. I WANT TO. I am finally loving myself and embracing a life change instead of a temporary fix. It feels good. And when I consider the path that brought me here to this point, it was most definitely not a straight line and it didn't always have benchmarks illustrating how far I'd come in my journey. But I'm here. I've finally arrived...in this aspect, at least. And I am committed to embracing the changes and improving on them. Yay me!