A Small Pause In The Elimination Diet

I’ve decided to put a small, one week pause on the Elimination Diet because last weekend I hit a small road block – exhaustion.  Day after day of planning, shopping, and prepping, then dishes and repeat finally got to me.  I got used to the first two weeks fairly easily because it was the same food the whole time.  What I wasn’t prepared for was the additional preparation of adding a new food every 3 days.  It all became too much.

As I’ve hinted in some of my previous posts, I’ve had an unhealthy relationship with food and my body for most of my life.  Using food as a weapon against myself which kept me from having the self-confidence I have a right to and eating food to mask any intense emotions I have, good or bad.

I decided to use this diet for a couple of reasons – first, to tackle the very real digestive issues I have and to allow my body to heal from all the terrible eating I’ve done for a very long time.  And, second, to build a healthier relationship with both food and my body.  To take the time to listen to my body and respect it.  This diet gives you a lot of time to do this, it’s the purpose of this program, really.

Knowing myself the way I do, I knew that the only way to really change my eating lifestyle was by an extreme change and a shock and it worked.  My body loved the change but it was just that – a shock, and it finally caught up with me.  I went from eating out practically every single day for the last 4 years to cooking every meal.  What’s more is, the healthier I eat, the more my body wants so I’ve been eating more then I usually do which just means more work.

Even though this is a self-imposed diet, the stubborn part of me has started to resist it.  The part of me that wants to be in full control and not be told what to do.  It’s as if my body has only just realized that I want this to be a life style change and it’s not a temporary diet for something to do.  There are a lot of emotions around this diet and I have to find some balance between them all.

Putting a pause on this diet isn’t about cheating or going off the plan, I’ve just paused on adding new foods back in to my diet.  Just giving pause to the amount of work this program takes.  This is my real life and I have to include real life adjustments in to this plan.

With that being said, I have cheated a couple of times since Saturday and while I don’t feel guilty or wrong about cheating, I’m paying attention to when I cheat or I should say, I haven’t been paying attention.  Sometimes I make a conscious decision to cheat, say, I’m going to meet a friend for a drink but a couple of time I cheated out of habit.  This is a good test for when I’m done the program and I have nothing to monitor my success.  This is going to be a much longer journey then a couple of months.

I was very hesitant to right this post because it feels like a privileged person whining, even to me.  But, after giving it some thought I realized that this is the whole reason I started this blog in the first place, to hold myself accountable.  To face the hard parts and be real so that I don’t just give up.  Starting next Sunday I’ll be back to following the diet and my regular posts.