That may not mean much to you, but to me - to where I'm at in my crazy diet plan - it means a lot.
I means a lot mentally and emotionally.
But really, when you are trying to better yourself and you hit road bumps, what doesn't effect you mentally and emotionally?
Let me re-cap the past few days and then I'll get to the goods on this steak day nonsense...
Monday was a good day. I went to hot yoga again for the first time in months. It felt so good. I love hot yoga, which is funny because I sort of dislike regular temperature yoga. I think it's kind of boring and hard, but hot yoga I love. There's just something about the excessive sweating and suffering that really makes me feel great, you know? ;)
Anyway, Monday was good for me. The scale went up a bit, but that was to be expected since I was eating cheese and a myriad of other things for the first time in a month. I still cannot have sugars or starches, but dairy being re-intorduced to one's body will cause one's body to weigh at least slightly more. It's science (I think). I know this, I understand it, and I accept it. Sort of.
I ate the rest of my friend Ashley's tomoato/motzerella/basil/balsamic salad lovlieness for dinner before yoga:
Yesterday, Tuesday, was much the same as Monday. When I woke up the scale had gone slightly higher again, but I tried to keep my spirits up as well. I was only around a pound or so up, and that's not bad when your body is getting used to consuming more calories. Like I've said all along, so much of this journey is mental.... it's just hard to take any gain with a nonchalant attitude, no matter how natural, when you've worked so hard to be disciplined and been successful for a month straight.
Anyway, I sucked it up and focused on getting through the day making good choices. I had a quick breakfast (if you know me, you know that I'm usually rushing to get anywhere that's the first place I have to be during any given day, no matter if it's at 8:00am or noon). I whipped up one whole egg + 3 egg whites with some cheese and had myself a nice little breakfast before I ran off to meet my very best friend Natalie for some tea in San Marcos.
Tea was nice. I've really gotten into tea on this diet. I'm allowed coffee, but for some reason I'm not drinking it at all. Perhaps I will give some sugar free vanilla iced coffee a chance next week sometime.
For lunch I had a lovely grilled chicken salad with romain lettuce, mushrooms, feta cheese, and oragnic "Goddess" dressing. It's the best thing ever. I might eat it every day for the rest of my life. I want to. I mean, I can't today because of the steak thing, but the days I'm not having a steak day I will probably be making some version of this salad.
After meeting with my growth group coach, Jess, I went home and ran a mile on the treadmill. Let's get one thing straight, people. It's not easy for me to do this. The running part isn't the worst part, it's the getting myself to just start doing it. I'm pretty good at disciplining myself to work out once I get something going, but I battle myself in my head all the way up until I step on the darn thing and start running. I always, always feel good after I do it, though, and I even upped my usual casual regiment to include some work with the weights we keep in our garage gym. I had grileld chicken with bacon and avo for dinner, and that was tasty as well.
When I got to growth group that night one of my lovely ladies had made these babies:
What I learned from my beheading is that I wasn't actually missing out on much. I'm sure they were nice and tasty, but my body did not want anything breaded or fried in my system and immediately sent the, "Ewie, no more of that please, Car," message to me. Which is good. No, it's great! There will always be a time and a place for the likes of dino nuggs, but every Tuesday at a growth group get together is not going to be it.
I went home after that, had a sugar-free caramel pudding, and actually told my parents that I wanted to live in that little cup of goodness. Not having anything sweet for 30 days will do that to you, you know.
All of this nonsense brings us to today.
This morning, Wednesday the 16th of March, I got on the scale and the number on it had risen just a bit to much for my, or my diet protocol's liking. I'm officially 2lbs over the breathing room I'm supposed to have with numbers on the scale in this stage of the diet, and that means it's a steak day.
Steak day means exactly what it sounds like. All I get today is one big, juicy steak. I eat nothing until dinner but can consume as much water, coffee, and tea as I please the rest of the day. For dessert (I'm telling myself it's dessert, it's really just with the steak tonight) I get either an apple or a tomato. Not much of a contest there.
So that's where I'm at. Steak day supposedly fixes any "over 2 lbs" problems and gets one back down to where one should be stabalizing. I'm doing good so far. I'm not hungry or anything, just stuck in the mental battle again of not walking around feeling like a failure. My family is being so supportive of me, reminding me to be patient and that we cannot always control what our bodies hold on to, and all that good stuff. I know the past few days I've been making good decisions and sticking to the protocol of phase 3 of this diet, and that might actually make this more frustrating.
I still have so far to go on this journey. But I'm really trying to take every step one step at a time, and give all of my successes and frustrations to God. I've been praying all day today for my mental state to change and He's provided me with a lot of help in that area already.
Today is just another day in the battle of life. Sometimes things go smoothly and sometimes we hit bumps that we have to work our way over. I know I'm working hard to change my life for the better, and I know I'm taking the right steps for me to get there. The one thing I don't know, is how it feels to reach this particular goal in my life.
But with everything in me I still believe that someday (sort of soon) I will.
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