Binge

I try to eat healthy. Most days it's pretty easy to do that. I'll have a salad and a bowl of chili beans. Or a salad with some baked chicken (lately salad has been on sale). Or boiled eggs and oatmeal for breakfast. But then there are days, like today, where I see a pizza sitting in the breakroom and it calls to me. After I eat it, I feel guilty and mad at myself for doing it. I wasn't hungry, my stomach was still a little upset from lunch and the pizza was cold. But I ate it anyways because it was there; the last one in the box. I could have stopped at the dry crust or after all the cheese slipped off. But I didn't. And now I'm full sitting at my desk writing about how full I am.

It's addict behavior. I know it's bad for me, it does nothing for me and it takes me two steps backwards after I had taken one forward. And I'm not just talking about the one pizza I had today. It's the extra fist fulls of potato chips after the sandwich is gone, the extra cheese on top of the chili beans and the sugary cereal late at night.

It is very hard to control sometimes because food is everywhere all the time. No one is in control over how much I eat except me and I sometimes give in to my cravings and what tastes good. I've struggled with this forever but I feel I have more discipline than I did years ago. You should see what I could eat at the buffet when I was in high school. I used to have Ramen noodles as a snack after school before dinner.

I have changed my ways because I know more about food and calories than I care to admit. I changed my ways because I don't have to eat like my parents and I am completely free to try new things and I can afford the healthy stuff now. I'm not saying my parents made "skeddy" all the time, they mostly prepared meat-and-potato dishes with a side of canned veggies. We had a poor man's diet because we were poor. Now we're not poor and we definitely eat a lot healthier because of it. No joke, there are salads, nuts and quinoa at my parent's house. They changed their ways too.

Scarfing down that cold pizza made me think about how I used to be long time ago and how far I've come on my journey to wellness. If you're on your journey to wellness, a word of advice: there will be days like this and it takes time to change the way you eat because the way you eat is part of your lifestyle.