How Do You Make the Kale Salad Taste Better than the Doughnut?

So I had a terrible day today. Not catastrophic or importantly bad, just super annoyingly bad. Very little of it was in my control except for my response and I did a little angry ranting and a lot of stuffing. I have a stuffing problem since I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. So instead I stuff it and feel sorry for myself as a martyr. That really does not make me nicer in the long run btw. It makes me passive aggressive.

One thing I actually didn’t do was go to the store and buy a bag of sugar filled something and scarf it down. It used to be a habit of mine. If I had a really bad day I would just say f*ck it and get a ton of crap. I thought about it today and the craving was there but not as powerful as it used to be. A new thought that I’ve been trying to cultivate was also there: how terrible I feel after.

To be honest I did have two glasses of wine but that’s a far cry from the Sin Dawg, chocolate covered raisins, doughnut trifecta that has graced my poor gut before. (My mouth is watering just thinking about them dammit dammit dammit.)

Let’s move on already. Kale salad, kale salad, kale salad. Okay, better. The really exciting thing here is some actual progress in changing an entrenched habit. I’m continuing to read Making Habits Breaking Habits and this week I learned the following:

1. We want intention to create our habits but that’s not always the case. 
2. Habits = intentions + past behaviors. 
3. So although I intend to never eat sugar again, my past sugar mongering will have something to say about that. The stronger the habit the less impact our intentions have. 
4. Strong habits are frequent (weekly or more) and especially strong if associated with a context (think: I’m in a coffee shop, what are the odds I’ll get the same thing I always do without thinking much about it).

So it’s very normal for strong habits to override the best of intentions. And my intentions won out this time! True, it was not a weekly event for me to sugar monger. And being on a lower carb, no sugar diet means my physiology isn’t screaming over the voice of my intentions. But hell, on a day like today, this totally goes in the win column.

Also I did about 140 kettle bell swings and a billion goblet squats and Biz made me laugh so hard during the Turkish Getups that I almost dropped the weight on my face. Another bonus, Mike checked my food journal and I killed it this week. It may yet become a habit…

The habits are working in the gym – in that context it’s easy to fall right into good habits – especially with Mike leading the way. I go and I feel so good. My butt hurts already but I’m getting so much stronger! Biz even on her worst days always has me laughing. Having the training appointment to go to was a nice diversion from the store and after, I feel good enough to skip the sugar stop on the way home.

Woo!

~Heather