Some cliches are true

Cliché number one; it's not a diet, it's a way of life. I know, sounds so lame. But it's absolutely, positively true. I've tried more diets than i can count, not a single one of them worked. It's a change in the way I think about food. It is working. I listen to my body. When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm satisfied, I stop.

I'm finding that my cravings are going away. I have always craved carbs. Pizza, pasta, bread, anything I could get at a drive through. I just don't really want any of it any more. Every once in a while it sounds good, but certainly not all the time, every day. And when I do eat it, it doesn't taste nearly as good as it did before.

More protein, less carbs. More fruits and vegetables, less carbs. I'm trying to avoid overly processed foods and buy things whole. Reading labels before I buy things, knowing what I'm getting and what to avoid. It really all goes back to changing the way you think about food. And it's getting easier. The weight loss is very slow, but it's loss. It took me a long time to gain it, I'm certainly not going to lose it over night.

Now I need to start an exercise program and get off my ass.

the end of life as I once new it

Changing the way I eat, changing the way I think, changing the way I sleep, changing the way I live. And now, changing the fact that I smoke. I quit. I've never been a good quitter. OK, that's not true. I've quit a lot of things in my life. I've quit jobs, I've quit relationships, I've quit trying, quit caring, quit feeling, quit dreaming. Come to think of it, I've gotten pretty darn good at quitting over the years.

Now it's time to start. Start living again. Start caring, dreaming, feeling. Time to start the rest of my life. And one of the very first things I need to do with that is quit. Quit smoking. It's been three days so far and it doesn't seem as bad this time. Maybe it's because the medications are working better, maybe it's because I'm finally actually truly ready to quit. I don't know, but I'm going with it.

I hate the way I feel when I don't smoke. It makes me feel.........fidgety, over stimulated, my skin feels crawly, my hair hurts. I've never been hooked on hard drugs, but I imagine quitting them must feel about the same. I sit here and all I can think about is having a cigarette. I have to keep myself distracted and doing things, or napping. But still, with all that, it's going easier than any of the previous times I've tried to quit.

It's a whole new world and a whole new life for me.

The problem with a moment of intense clarity

In that moment, when everything came together and finally made sense, I was almost overwhelmed by it. The amount of information that suddenly became clear in my mind, my entire life. Now, it's time to process all this information, one little bit at a time. It's really quite exhausting.

health? or hell?

Funny how similar they sound isn't it? I'm working on changing not only my diet, but how I eat. Seems like a pretty simple concept on the surface. In practice, not so easy. I've got to change how I cook, what I cook, how much of it I cook, what I buy, how I shop, how often I shop and do a lot of planning.

It's not that I don't know how to cook and it's certainly not that I don't enjoy cooking, I do. It's the new ideas, new recipes, new purchases. Stopping the old habits of easy, quick meals. You know, pasta, pizza, meat. All those things you can just chuck in the oven and forget about.

I've been working on reprogramming my brain on all kinds of other things, now I have to work on the food aspect. One key problem is, I really don't like green things all that much. I was raised on beans, meat, potatoes, pasta. However, I've found a way around that. Sauces! Good sauces. Chinese sauces, Japanese sauces, southern sauces, Mexican and Cuban sauces. I'll tell you what, you put broccoli in the right sauce and I'll eat the hell out of it.

So, now it's time to shop, and cook, and experiment. And most importantly, change the way I think about food. Ah hell.