December was the best month I’ve had so far. I also discovered how to use fingered citron (pictured above) to make salads taste better, which was… an experience in itself.
Here’s the list of things I ate outside of the diet/lifestyle;
- 1x Plain baked potatoes (no salt, butter, etc.) once
- 1x Lindt small chocolate ball thingy
- 2x Plain white rice (the leftovers were the 2nd time)
- 1x Mixed whole wheat bread (contained sugar and whole wheat, not whole grain)
That’s it :). Honestly. That’s all I ate that was “forbidden”. Which explains my happy mood right now. I’m going to continue to pursue that month of “perfection” but overall I’m pleased with December’s turnout.
See, December actually started of on a low note (November wasn’t that great of a month), but at least I had my determination and frankly that’s all that’s needed. I think that the fact that the world was in this stuff-yourself-with-everything-unhealthy holiday craze actually helped me. See, I’m one of those people who does the exact opposite of what the majority is doing, and this combined with the fact that practically everyone around me was against my new dietary lifestyle fueled my need to continue properly. And, when I say against, I mean AGAINST. People actually gave me a semi-intervention, telling me how stupid this was. But, you should have seen some of their faces when I argued my point by telling them some of the facts about meat, dairy, and sugar :). In fact, all the turkey, gingerbread houses, candy canes, and cookies around me didn’t even seem as tempting to me as baked corn-on-the-cob or spinach did (weird… in a good way).
I decided earlier that I would make each month about overcoming 1-2 “obstacles”. Starting with December 2009, the first obstacle that I had to overcome was whole grains. I’ve always disliked whole grains, and I’ve been avoiding them by eating a lot of vegetables and fruits. But I decided to make it a habit that I eat whole grains on a daily basis. My breakthrough moment was when, without thinking, I ate whole grains twice a day for a whole week (this is the main reason I’m so happy). I’m now thinking about buying a break maker and doing this all myself.
For January 2010, I’m going to try to limit the amount of salt I consume. Even though it’s not necessary right now, I noticed my intake was unusually high, and I’d rather like to change that. Another thing was that I consumed a lot of fruit and vegetable juices and few glasses of plain old water. So in January I’ll also be concentrating on just drinking water. And it’s going to be tap water, not bottled water.
Someone (Tynan) reminded me of a key concept which drastically helped. He reminded that I don’t have to connect food with fun, which frankly, when I read it off his blog before I started sounded like… bullshit, but now makes complete sense, and I’m sorry I doubted him.
That’s all that happened (short update). December made me realize that I’m most likely never going to stop being ubervegan. It’s just too good; I stopped getting sick, I never get a case of the “blahs” anymore, and my body feels as if it’s breathing for the first time. Why would I want to change that?
photo credit: SummerTomato