Habitual Cravings

Over the past 4 days the thing that has struck me the most is how often I eat out of habit. Normally if it looked good or smelled good I would eat it. Not thinking once really about what I was putting in my body or how is would effect me. As I've written, I always knew dairy and gluten caused me tummy aches, but I never wanted to cut them from my diet because they are soooooo yummy and they are in so much that I eat! I was willing to sacrifice feeling sick to have the sweet taste of ice cream or a yummy melting brownie. But there are other food items that didn't make me sick (if I had them in moderation) like potato chips and certain dips that I would just eat and not pause to think about how much I was eating.

It struck me at church during communion. I went up and took the cracker and grape juice and came back to my seat. I had a time of reflection, then instinctively put the cracker in my mouth. I took one chew and stopped in my tracks realizing that this cracker wasn't detox friendly. Now I KNOW a tiny piece of a cracker or a sip of grape juice wasn't going to set me back or send me craving after the next donut I saw, but I just realized that I hadn't even had a conversation with myself, that maybe would have gone like this:

"Communion isn't detox friendly, but that's totally fine because one. well it's communion and two. it's not a meal, it's not even a snack! and three. it's communion"

I would have taken communion with no guilt or second thoughts, but the fact that nothing even crossed my mind was a red flag. It has sent me on a search for what other things from day to day go in my mouth because it's the thing to do at that moment. Like eating those chips and dips during a football game, because that's what you do when you are watching a game, or grabbing some chocolate when I was feeling down or grabbing a coke when I was feeling tired. They were natural habits that I did without thinking. Are there foods/drinks in your life like this? Let's call them habitual cravings. Media has done a terrific job at convincing us that in certain moments, there are appropriate foods/drinks. I challenge you to stop and think about these habitual cravings, is it time to cut any out? I sure know I need to.

Day four has been a fairly good day. Nothing too crazy happened. Had our shakes, last nights meal for lunch, then for dinner I made "Yummy Meatloaf" and fried/kinda burned (haha) carrots. I'm sure it would have been a lot yummier if I hadn't put so much cayenne pepper in it, but overall it was edible (at least for us, it was too spicy for Olivia) and filled our tummy's. For dessert we both had a fit chew. I had been craving chocolate or something sweet all day, so it hit the spot!

Now that's it's getting warmer there have been heaps of pictures on instagram and facebook of people's froyo buys and I just drool over the pictures. That's something I've been craving every night since we started this detox :P

Day 4 is done! WOOT!