Day 11, Thursday: In Which I Feel Like an Over-Stuffed Sausage

This day was the day that my falling off the wagon blog went up. And I was shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you! At the responses to my dietary indiscretions. First of all, I was shocked that anyone is reading the blog. (Since then many of you have very kindly offered me compliments and encouragement. Thank you for reading!) Second, I was shocked that some people were outright gleeful at my fall off the wagon! (Okay, just two. One of them was my brother. And the other one was this idiot I know [cough JARED].) Others were sweetly sympathetic and suggested I try again in a couple of months. Which is very kind. But my feelings about it go like this: DISCIPLINE=GETTING BACK ON THE WAGON. Which implies that I will fall off it. When I start any practice, I allow for falling off the wagon, or I will go insane!

You've heard the saying, "perfect is the enemy of good"? Perfection is not a feature of any human endeavor or even a feature of reality. Practice doesn't make perfect for me. Instead, practicing stuff makes me better. I get more confident because I know I can overcome challenges. I get more patient because I know from practicing that everybody makes mistakes. I get nicer because I know what it's like to struggle. In my world, discipline is being okay with failing so that I can try again without feeling like a loser. Are you a person who responds well to self-excoriating internal exhortations like, "COME ON, you WUSS, can't go a single month without a cookie?! Get back on the wagon, pond scum!!!"? If so, hooray for you! That doesn't work for me. I have to treat myself like a very timid puppy.

Back to the business of the current day's dietary adventures. As you know, Wednesday I went to bed feeling like crap. I must admit that the bigass steak I hoovered up certainly played a role, although the idea of me being anything other than delighted by a bigass steak is incomprehensible. I was hoping that the dawn's early light would cleanse me of any lingering ill effects. No such luck--on this day I woke up feeling like an over-egged pudding. Like an over-stuffed sausage. Replete...with meat.

TOO MUCH MEAT. So I didn't eat breakfast till 11:00. As I may have mentioned, I prefer to eat at regular times. As you may have noticed, I almost never do. But my feeling is, if you're not hungry...don't eat. Unless you're going to teach a yoga class and won't be able to eat again till later. In that case, take a snack.

Breakfast: 2 eggs at 11:00
Lunch: Green apple with almond butter at like 2:30
Snack: half a cucumber with a slice of turkey at maybe 6:00
Dinner: sweet potato pancakes* from Diane's book, roasted brussels sprouts, roasted asparagus at 9:00ish.

This day was my experiment with eating very little meat on the Detox. And I did feel better, a very little better, at the end of this day. But not much. I just felt full all day. Is it possible that the Detox is somehow resetting how much I need to eat, and that my habits have simply not caught up with my new, smaller food intake needs? A girl can dream.

*This item will come up again later. Remember it.