I Ate at McDonald's Today Even Though I Knew I Was Going to Start This Blog

Hello, there.

I'm a junk food junkie.  DUH.  I am starting this blog because the goal of three months without junk food is so intense and so ambitious, I literally don't think I'd have a prayer of sticking to it without some public accountability.

Yet, I do think I'm ready.  Not only do I want to be healthy, but my interest in aligning behavior with intentions is very alive right now.  Changing habits, re-wiring the brain, bucking past trends. Slowing, stopping, and then reversing momentum.

Here's a sad confession:  this blog was once entitled "Losing 50 Pounds of FAT in One Year" and I started it in 2012.  I only wrote one post.  I didn't lose 50 pounds of fat in one year.

Looking on the bright side, I did gradually lose about 30 pounds in about two years.  There's a lot of stopping and starting and disembarking and re-embarking the proverbial wagon.  I got to the point where people kept saying, "WOW!! You've lost a LOT of weight!!"

My mindset and my approach have changed a lot since 2012.  I just wanted to be thinner and look better.  Now I don't even know why.  Look better for who?  For what?  Now my goal is more focused on increasing consumption of awesome nutrients and reducing consumption of toxins.

I might not be as far along as some people.  But I've come a long way.  My new approach is very slow, because it includes taking setbacks in stride.  If a mistake is the end of the world, I'm setting myself up for a nervous breakdown.

Given all that, you might wonder why I would define this new challenge by what's prohibited.  Well, so far, I've done a lot of research.  I've walked a lot.  I've reduced calories.  I've learned about super-foods.  I eat green smoothies a lot.  I've started buying a lot more organic produce and products from the health-food store than a past version of myself would have ever imagined.  But I still give in to my fast food and other junk food cravings several times a week.  I've identified that specific pattern as being the most entrenched and the most detrimental.  The problem isn't "being fat." The problem is continuing to do something that I know is not good for me, as if my brain, thoughts, and intentions are somehow not connected to the actions I carry out.

Sure, there's a time and a place for junk food, and for being relaxed about it.  That time and place is when you've already established that you ARE the master of yourself - that when you choose a behavior, it lines up with your values and won't de-rail your goals.

I'm an emotional eater, no doubt about it.  If I don't give into my junk food cravings, here's what's going to happen:  I will cry.  I will be very sad.  I will go insane.  I will have a temper tantrum. I will throw a fit.  I will be inconsolable.  I will curse this life.  I will say, "Why, God, why??!"   It will freak out my husband and piss him off.  I will be humiliated at my childishness.  He will want to indulge me.  He will make excuses for me:  "You couldn't help it, we didn't have any time to eat anything else." But the silent witness in me knows there are plenty of people who manage to avoid junk food.  The laws of physics don't prevent me from becoming one of them.

It will be hard. It will be HARD.  I think the longest I've ever gone without any junk food at all is three weeks. WEEKS, not months.

I need to accomplish this to prove to myself that I can do it and that when it comes to what goes into my body, my rational, thinking mind is the boss.  Junk food isn't prohibited forever; that would be stupid.  I'd just really like to give myself the opportunity to feel the full effect of all the beneficial things I am doing, instead of blunting or partially negating them with a comforting pastime that makes me a hypocrite.  I think the positive side-effects - a feeling of well-being, slimming down, sleeping better, having energy, being in a better mood - could be so potent that after three months of that, I'd never really go back to that disconnect between what I know is right and what I actually do (when it comes to food, at least).

Look, I can't stress enough how HARD this is going to be for me.  HARD.  Do you get that? It's way more than I've ever been able to do or tried to do before.  I'm scared I will fail.  Really scared.  Even more than that, I'm scared that I can't cope with life without my junk food.  This is very serious.

I can't do this alone.  I need support and encouragement.  I need to blog about my very intense feelings, like a lot.  It's not going to be pretty.  It's going to be a psychiatric train wreck.  You have no idea.

So here's my vow.  Starting when I wake up in the morning on May 1st, 2015, and ending when I wake up in the morning on August 1st, 2015, I will eat no food that I consider junk: fast food, fried foods, soda, desserts (even dark chocolate and hot cocoa - I almost faint upon writing those words), chips, processed oils, or pizza (unless home-made and not greasy).

My favorite places to eat are McDonald's, Chick-Fil-A, and Hungry Howie's.  A big part of me still thinks I'm way too weak to have a chance of avoiding them.  I'm not completely convinced life is worth living without fried chicken.

But that's exactly why I need to learn from personal, direct experience, that life is, after all, worth living, even without my favorite vice.