Old Habits Die Hard

Whole Food Fuel from the Farmer's Market.

This past week has been hell.  I haven't been this busy in a very long time.  3 jobs in 4 days, 2 of which are big.  That means long hours at the studio and very little time to myself.  That also means I need to plan ahead if I want to stay on track with my meals.  I had every intention of doing just that for most of the week.  In fact, for the first few days of the week, I was quite good.  Then the stress started to take over.  I started to function on auto-pilot.  I started to get too tired to care.  That combined with lack of workouts is a dangerous place to be for me.  I didn't workout Thursday, Friday or Saturday.   Friday at 5:00 pm I was sitting in the middle of a casting, stressed to the gills, stuffing pink candy popcorn into my face.  About 3 big handfuls.  It tasted gross and gave me a pink tongue. I didn't really want it, it just happened to be there so I ate it.   I suppose I thought somewhere in the back of my mind that it would help calm me down or distract me from all the stress I was dealing with.  It didn't.  It just gave me gut rot.  

This is an old habit of mine that I thought I had conquered.  Mindless eating.  People always say "oh you train all the time you can have that piece of.....or that handful of.....".   Maybe.   But I didn't lose almost 20lbs and lean out by eating crap.  I make a conscious decision about what I put in my body.  Once and a while I'll indulge in some chips or ice cream and I won't feel bad about it.    Because I don't think that one should go through life in food denial, unless of course you're training for a figure competition.  But the majority of us aren't that extreme.  A little "bad for you" can be good for you as long as you don't make it a regular occurrence.   I aim to eat healthy 80%-90% of the time.  That means that 5-6 days a week, I'm eating healthy, mainly whole foods.   1-2 days a week I "slack off" a bit.    That seems to work for me under "normal" circumstances.  This past week has been anything but normal and I know this coming week is going to be just as challenging.   The big question is, now that I've identified the issue, how am I going to deal with it.

That remains to be seen.