Reflections on Extreme Healthy Eating Month

Wow, February flew by! I guess that's what you get with a 28-day month. Extreme Healthy Eating Month went pretty well for me. I did break my vows a few times, but generally I was good about sticking to my list. Sticking to a list of allowed foods was actually much easier for me than just trying to avoid unhealthy foods.

It was easy to do at work, especially - which I didn't expect since we constantly have sweets at work. Right now there are cookies, Starburst candy, and chocolate caramel popcorn available at work, and it's always like that. Home health and durable medical equipment agencies bring sweets to us to try to win our favor (it's a competitive field) but I wish they'd bring healthy foods a little more often.

Where I cheated was mostly at other people's houses; I didn't want to turn down friends' hospitality. I also quickly realized that my favorite salads are those that have blue cheese or feta on them, so I made an exception to my no cheese rule for that.

Speaking of the no cheese rule though, I discovered that I feel a lot better with less dairy in my diet. I ate Greek yogurt almost every day, but we were drinking lactose-free milk (which I don't really like so I didn't have much of it) and other than that, the tiny amounts of cheese on salad were all I had. I don't think I'm lactose intolerant, because I can certainly handle dairy just fine, but I feel kind of sluggish and bloated after eating a lot of cheese. Too bad I also love cheese. I missed cheese way more than sweets.

Since yesterday was March 1, though, I went a little overboard on the sweets. I ate a cookie and some of that chocolate caramel popcorn at work, as well as several Girl Scout cookies at home. By dinnertime I was feeling kind of nauseous, but then Ross wanted to go for Free Pancake Day at IHOP, so we did. Honestly, I kind of just want to eat salad all day now.