It all starts with...
A realazation that over the past year and a half I have gotten very sick, very often. What changed for me in that time? I moved from one side of the country to the other, I married my high-school sweet-heart, and, most drastically, I started taking care of him and stopped taking care of me.
Being away from the demands of my family and friends gave me what I thought was freedom, but it also put a lot of pressure on me to make sure I devouted more attention to my new husband. I'm an over-achiever so being back home made the demands of people I knew into my demands. Being away from them means that the needs and demands of my husband are my demands, and I will meet them above and beyond what he needs. He constantly told me to take care of myself and he would be just fine; he didn't want me to focus on him that way, but I did.
Well the time came where I realized he was right, but habits had formed that I didn't even know where there. Food habits. He doen't eat a lot of fresh, well cooked food. My husband prefers heavily processed, powdered and flavored cardboard. I like to cook fresh meat, vegtables, drink real fruit smoothies with no sugar. I never used to consume a lot of dairy or wheat products because I always saw them as 'fillers' even before I started researching healthier living.
But I had been catering to my husbands needs, and I'm young, so when I tried to remember how to cook the way I liked to cook I couldn't remember. It was strange. Before I moved from one end to the other, I could go to the store with fifty dollars and have food for two weeks, all of it healthy and most of it fresh, and never feel hungry. Now the thought of trying to go to the store to shop for a weeks worth of food instead of browsing the isles for snacks and dinner for the day was daunting.
It has been a slow battle, but I did re-learn how to do it. I didn't jump into daily exercise and an extreme diet. I didn't want a 'quick fix'. What I want is to re-adjust my habits to a life-long healty style that I can be happy with. Over the last two months I have slowly weened out the processed foods and added the better things, I have started cooking more and using less. While I haven't started to drastically improve, I already feel better on a daily basis just because I know my habits are changing.
This weekend was my first drastic step.
I cleared out the cubbords, went to the store (after eating!) and bought only good foods. I came home and pre-cooked all the main courses for the week, including lunches, then froze them so they are ready to go and no complaining from my husband! I made dozens of little baggies of ready-to-go snacks of vegtables and fruits, and even made some of my own snack bars using raw honey, cranberries and almonds.
I finally feel like I have opened my eyes, like the habits I've been working towards these last two months are taking shape. Like I'm ready to make the next step in not getting sick anymore.
I don't care about the extra weight, I can always walk it off.
I don't care about the acne break-outs, I can always wash it away. (Though it is darn itchy)
What I care about is feeling like a human being who can get up and enjoy the sunshine, because that sunshine is better for me than what is at the bottom of that potatoe chip bag I see the neighborhood kids walking around with.
I have finally opened my eyes.
