the inner dialogue

A few weeks ago; I decided to try out bringing my soup with me to have for lunch instead of having it for dinner. I had been bringing salad or a blended salad for lunch since I started ETLing last June and it works out better some days than others. I thought that if I have warm and filling soup for lunch it will help me not make excuses to go get lunch from the Natural Foods store or eat the random junk food that sometimes finds its way into the office kitchen.

So the plan has been working well and today I had a breakthrough. I've talked before about the delicious but not necessarily healthy wraps at the Natural Foods store which is coincidentally right down the street from my office. In the past I have had trouble staying away from these wraps. I get the idea of them in my head and sometimes its hard for me to say no and eat my planned lunch. The thought of them just tortures me until I give in and go get one. Sometimes I feel guilty about it; sometimes I feel icky after eating it; and sometimes I enjoy it. But I always know that I'm not eating as healthy as I should.

Here's the part about the breakthrough. Today I brought some of my blended greens and lentil soup (two posts down) with me for lunch but I thought in the back of my head that maybe I would get a wrap for lunch and save the soup for another day. Usually this is the point where I can't get the thought of the wrap out of my head and have to go get it to stop torturing myself; but today the inner me said "No, I really want to have delicious and nutritious green soup for lunch." instead of going on and on about the wrap. BREAKTHROUGH! The soup for lunch technique works!

I think that I am *finally* getting to a point in my ETLing where I am out of the diet mentality and am more focused on just eating good healthy food. I am more concerned with making sure that I get in as much raw and leafy greens into all my meals rather than how many pounds I am going to lose this week or when I will hit my target weight. It took 7 months to get to this point; and for a long time I didn't think that I would. Now I can really say that Eat to Live is a lifestyle for me and not a diet tool. Once I do reach my goal weight I will surely keep this up for life. It feels so good to be able to say that and really truely believe it.