Epic Fail

The Big Diet was an awesome success. The week after The Big Diet was an epic fail. As I'd mentioned, we got hideously carried away and bought/made WAY more treats than we could possibly eat during our three hour splurge. The idea was that when we were finished eating, we'd freeze what we could and either give away or throw away the rest. Well - that's not what happened.

We had 3/4 of a cake left, a HUGE pile of macaroni, three candy bars, two bottles of soda, a bag of chips - I'm fairly sure there was more. And we ate it. All of it. We nibbled the cake till it was gone. We ate chips and ice cream and candy and soda while we watched Star Trek in the evening. I even cooked more pasta and ate lots of cereal because by day 3 I'd give up. I convinced myself that since my sister and her family were coming to town and I'd have less control over the menu (though they eat very healthily) and we were celebrating my nephew's birthday (with cake), I might as well just eat whatever I wanted all week, and start over on Tuesday.

BIG mistake. I feel awful. I'm bloated and sleepy and cranky and have gained back at least 3 of the 9.5 lbs I worked so hard to lose. My skin is raw and angry again and my tummy hurts a lot. So, today, I'm back to the diet. Mostly. I did make tuna salad for lunch, but we ate it on rice cakes with lots of veggies (and, ok, I admit to putting cream cheese in my corn...) I'm planning beans and rice and veggies for dinner - every night this week. And we've set up a new system for keeping on track.

Since we're no longer earning time for a splurge, we needed new motivation for eating clean. We've devised a new points system - 2 points for a perfect day, 1 point if we have minimal animal products, 0 points if we have sugar/pasta/junk. When we collectively earn 100 points, we can reward ourselves with a date night (one that hopefully doesn't involve Golden Corral or a similar pig-out :p). This will also help us regulate the frequency of date nights, as they're getting expensive now that we need a sitter.

So, another lesson learned the hard way. Lifestyle changes are hard to make, but we're getting there. I'm also considering switching to organic dairy and meat (for health and because it'll help me eat less of it) and maybe trying to buy organic for the 'dirty dozen' produce. And, we're nearly done with the basement, so hopefully we can plug the machines back in and break a sweat again (in the meantime, I need to make more of an effort to get in a walk in the evening). Two steps forward, one step back. At least I'm motivated to keep up the healthy eating - it really does make me feel SO much better :) Oh, and my sister taught me a couple of awesome recipes (lasagna and quiche) that substitute whole grain millet for pasta or crust - super yummy and much healthier!

As I'm continuing to tweak my menu and learn new recipes, I'll keep asking you all for your tips and advice. Do you have any great dairy-free (pasta-free) recipes you want to share? Anything vegan, raw, or vegetarian? Any super yummy whole-grain recipes? Any great smoothie or juice concoctions to pass along? I always appreciate any help I can get! You guys are great!