Deep Cleansing Breaths

(fruit in my kitchen)

The coffee was definitely a good choice this morning. No foggy head today. Lunch was lentils and rice with collards and eggplant, and I was very excited to find that I had brought a small container of cauliflower with a little potato and mushroom.

I think this cleanse was good because it stripped away so many (all) of the things I had come to rely on to eat - bread & butter (I think that's genetic. My mother sometimes has bread and butter for dinner), the pretzels at work that aren't even satisfying but provide me with a distraction, ditto on the Newman's oreos at work, ditto on the granola bars at work, pasta servings that creep up and up in size. I don't really eat "junk" but I had gotten into a habit of eating all of whatever I'd made. Which is OK when it's all veggies, but doesn't feel good when it's other things.

I had also stopped putting thought into what I was eating, which left me with no packed lunch, and rushing to find something to bring to work, and not having it be nutritionally satisfying or filling, which lead to picking at snacks in the office, and then being hungry when I got home and not having the patience to put thought into dinner, and so on.

I had also cut back on exercise over the last few months. I wasn't moving and treating my body like I should. And now the more I move, the more I move. I went to yoga last night at 5:30, and was back on the mat at 6am feeling stronger than ever.

And now I am building this habit of reaching for fruit and veggies as my first line of defense, not as an afterthought. That is the value of this cleanse to me, not so much the "cleanse" but the chance to build new habits in the safety and boundaries of the cleanse. To have the options removed by some outside force, so I'm able to rebuild with the foundations. Then, once I have down the forming of my meals around plants, the eggs and meat and bread and butter can come back in, without hogging all the space like they did before.