Girl on a Journey: Food: Day 7

Well… I made it a week. This week has been tough. I have learned lots of things about my eating habits that I never knew existed. For example… if I put too much cereal in a cereal bowl I am making for a child in the morning, I take a handful out and put it in my mouth. When I am done fixing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for school lunches, I always lick the knife. When I am baking or cooking and a piece falls off of something, I put it in my mouth. I am a very lazy cook. I like simple, go to, do not prepare (or know what is actually in my food) options for breakfast and lunch. These are all things I am being made painfully aware of as I have almost cheated (accidentally of course) so many times this week.

Hard things this week:

Ballgames! We had ballgames almost every night this week. Preparing a sit down meal is challenging when you are always walking out the door (if you don’t prepare in advance). I could always have the kids fed before we left, but preparing a whole30 compliant meal for myself usually didn’t happen until post game. Then I was just frustrated by all the nachos, burger, and hotdogs I saw people eating at the games.

Daytime craziness. This week just so happen to be a very busy week of errand running, swim lessons, field trips, baby showers and other commitments. Next week should calm back down to normal. But again, my lack of preparing made me not being able to eat at normal times (the lack of preparing is a running theme if you hadn’t noticed). So I resorted to eggs and salsa (sometimes with a side of guacamole) almost everyday for lunch because I was too tired and hungry to fix anything else. I now have 2 canker sores in my mouth… most likely from the amount of salsa consumed this week.

Evil outside forces a.k.a. my husband. Ok… I am completely joking about this. I love my husband dearly and he hasn’t been here a good portion of the first week of the fast so I am going to cut him a break. But he came home from Germany with a GIANT bag of gummy bears and huge bars of chocolate for the kids… because they were made in Germany of course. I told him it was like Satan himself was standing in my kitchen trying to lure me to the dark side. :)

So those are the challenges I am facing the first week of this fast.

I did go back and re-read the chapter on food in the book 7 by Jen Hatmaker (the inspiration for this entire fasting process). It made me feel like a giant baby. She had only 7 items of food for the entire month. Though my options have decreased dramatically from my normal routine, I have SOOOO many more options than 7. So that has helped a little in my attitude adjustment toward the end of the week.

I have also been reading the book It Starts with Food. It is all about the Whole30 program. I am definitely having a love/hate relationship with the book. It is very enlightening, but it makes me want to eat nothing…ever. I was very encouraged that the founders of this crazy thing had a rough time too in the beginning. She loved it, she hated it. It was amazing, it was terrible. I feel the exact same way. So I am not the only one that has food related mood swings. :) I am just a couple chapters in; I will let you know how it goes.

This week has been mostly about the mechanics of the whole thing… what can I eat what I can’t. I am reading packages and labels non-stop. Researching, goggling, hunting for recipes in compliance… these are all things that have occurred this week. I haven’t had too many “God moments” related to food yet, but I will tell you two things that are happening.

This fast in making me be in constant prayer. Not only for me, but for my wonderful friends that are doing this along side me. Every time there is a temptation or a bad attitude toward the food I “have” to eat or something I am not allowed to eat this month… I am praying. This seems to be occurring way more often during the day than in the previous month’s fasts. So for that I am thankful.

Not that this would have to be food related, but it just so happen to be this week. Addi and I were having a picnic lunch and eating watermelon. She was being a typical three year old and just enjoying the watermelon, letting all the juice flow down her arms and onto her clothes. I was sitting on a bench, so I bent forward to take a bite of my watermelon as to not be covered in juice. Addi watched me do this a couple of times and then started mimicking my actions. She was bending forward to take a bite too. It was an instant realization and fantastic visual reminder that she (and my other children) are watching my every move and using that as a guideline on what they should be doing. In Proverbs 22:6 (King James is my favorite version on this one) it says: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Though I don’t think they are talking about food here, there is something to be said about EVERY action we make being part of that “training up” process. I think it is important to train up our children to make good choices in EVERY area of their lives… even the ones that don’t seem so “spiritual”. And the best way is to lead by example.