Recommit yourself to making better choices

It’s been four months since I started a new diet — not really a diet, but a whole lifestyle change. As with many res­o­lu­tions made at the begin­ning of a new year, I was “gung-ho” for the first, oh, month and a half, and have started to fade in these past few weeks.

Let me tell you about this new adven­ture: I decided to try a vegan, mostly raw food diet. Crazy, right? I had been read­ing about “liv­ing” food ver­sus “dead” food and how we, as liv­ing beings, need a lot of liv­ing food since the enzymes in raw (or uncooked) food is what our bod­ies need to keep our cells grow­ing and repro­duc­ing the way they should. When you cook the food, my book claimed, it kills the liv­ing enzymes, ergo our bod­ies are denied very valu­able cell-building blocks and don’t work prop­erly, espe­cially not being able to fend off dis­ease. Makes per­fect sense to my way of thinking.

So this new diet includes a green bar­ley grass drink two or three times a day, juic­ing at least once a day to get more of the nutri­ents from the veg­gies — I mean our guts can only process so much roughage, right? — and allows a cooked meal for din­ner. Whole wheat pas­tas, grains, nuts, an abun­dance of fresh fruits and veg­gies are all allowed. The kicker, besides los­ing dairy (I am a cheese fanatic), was the no white refined sugar, white enriched flour and no caf­feine rules. Youch! Sugar and flour are in every­thing. But, when I learned that these didn’t help our bod­ies in any way what­so­ever, it made sense. I needed to treat myself with respect and eat what we were designed to eat — eas­ier said than done.

Another part of this lifestyle was a com­mit­ment to exer­cise. So, with fer­vor and deter­mi­na­tion, I started work­ing out 10 to 15 min­utes a day, mostly resis­tance train­ing which I fol­lowed on a DVD. I tried to walk a lot, too.

I have to admit, I felt great. The whole rea­son I started this new lifestyle was to gain energy, which I was des­per­ately lack­ing, and had been for some time, not just since my preg­nancy and life with a new­born. Side ben­e­fits were I lost the baby weight, wasn’t get­ting sick (when every­one around me was drop­ping with colds and flu), my aches and pains sub­sided and my energy level was the best it had been in years.

Then, here’s what hap­pened: I would grant myself a treat — maybe a piece of my mother-in-law’s deli­cious home-made apple pie (I’m talk­ing prize-winning pie here), maybe a chai tea here and there, then a slice of pizza loaded with cheese, then a bit of Bo’s awe­some chicken salad when work­ing at the Com­mu­nity Mar­ket… and so began my back­slide. I started being too “tired” and too “busy” to work out. Days would go by and I wouldn’t turn on the DVD or jump on the rebounder.

What I noticed was that vicious cycle: when I didn’t work out I was tired but I was too tired to work out. When I started cheat­ing on the diet, I lost my willpower and I didn’t feel good. I didn’t feel good so I made poor eat­ing decisions.

So I am attempt­ing to recom­mit myself to mak­ing bet­ter choices. I know there are a zil­lion dif­fer­ent diets and ways to think about food out there and you have to find what works best for you. If you want to know more about what I am try­ing, check out the Hal­lelu­jah Diet at hacres.com. Are you mak­ing healthy, “green” choices? Share what works for you at newsroom@delgazette.com. Here’s to our health!

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware, is a writer and mother of four with a spe­cial inter­est in learn­ing and writ­ing about all things “green.”

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on May 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.