There are parts of the challenge that don't exactly fit with your day-to-day schedule. 12 weeks is a long time. There are birthdays, weekend events, holidays, business trips, pleasure trips, spontaneous invites, all-day events. There are also standard workdays (stay at home parents included). I understand. It's hard, uncomfortable, weird, and inconvenient. There are times when it doesn't feel like it's just gonna work that day. You're right. Now (Cave)Man Up.
12 weeks is a long time. 3 months. However, it accomplishes something HUGE. By strict adherence to Zone blocks and Paleo choices, you are slowly chipping away at your dysfunctional relationship with food. This can't be accomplished in 7 days, or 5 days on and 2 days off, or 1 day off every 7 days. It has to be accomplished by severing the emotional and perceived physical need of certain food choices at certain times during the day, week or month.
Food measurements are exact, but not really. Is your cup of vegetables actually a cup or almost a cup? In the long run, after 12 weeks, the couple of grams that escape or sneak in won't matter, they will even out. No one can account, exactly, for Every. Single. Gram. Don't try to cut a corner, fit the proverbial square peg into the round hole. Just measure the food out for your blocks and eat them. When you can. If it takes an hour, fantastic. If you wolf it down in 30 seconds, equally fantastic.
If you're hungry before your next meal, settle down. If you're full before your meal is finished, settle down.
We all like to eat the things that we like to eat. However, each and every one of us that signed up for this Challenge did so because we were dissatisfied with some aspect of our health. Weight, inches, body fat percentage, stamina, strength, whatever. At some point, we all looked in the mirror and thought, "I need to improve this, and I know that I can." Right now, we all want chocolate or pie or ice cream or potato chips. Many of us want a beer. That is because we've completely socialized our food intake, and we have developed an unhealthy dependency on the types of food we've eaten.
Who told you that breakfast has to look like a bowl of oatmeal with berries and a drizzle of cream? Or eggs over easy with bacon and drizzly, syrup-covered slab of French toast (even if it's gluten-free bread)? Did you know that no one is the breakfast boss of you? (I'm the youngest child in my family. I have perfected the tone and delivery of "You're not the Boss of me.") You may eat brussel sprouts and steak for breakfast. A snack does not have to look like plain popcorn or an apple or a Chobani yogurt. A snack can be a cup of broccoli, some sunflower seeds, and a slab of pork. Dinner can be eggs and green beans, with salsa.
Once you change what you think you're supposed to eat and when, you will feel liberated from the food ties. And it takes time. Some of the residual needs stick around for 5-6 weeks. Most of them are gone after the first week. TV commercials of gooey cheese appetizers and fried anythings will be irrelevant to your clean-eating brain. It won't look good. And, if you happen to get a taste of anything with an artificial ingredient, you will immediately know it and it will taste horrific.
It's time to cut away what society has told us to eat and when to eat it. Here's why you eat: healthy fuel to survive and thrive to the next day. It's no more complicated than that. We eat the best fuel and hydrate well so that we can have energy to complete our day's work and then rest solidly. After our deep sleep, we can wake up and be productive superpowers again the next day! The Zone helps us figure out what our plate should look like. I think we all have been smacked square in the jaw with different looking plates at meal time. A lifetime of eating American doesn't change quickly. We have 12 weeks to hit the reset button, to change the way we eat, look, and feel. Yes, it's strict. I need strict, because I will negotiate anything in my mind and rationalize it if I believe it's possible. Strict is good.
Measure, eat, drink, rest, repeat. The bags of the Old Eating style are packed and at the curb. Don't let them back in.
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