A Balanced Diet

Hypothetically, if you have one day that is a super, super healthy day where you fill up on vegetables and good, nutritious food and don't eat as much as a sesame seed over what you need, then the next day you have a bacon breakfast, four bits of cake, a packet of cookies and a curry with all the trimmings (and all the stuff everybody else can't finish) for dinner.. does that good/bad actually create balance in the grand scheme of things?

I am not sure that it does, but let's just pretend it does for a moment to make me feel a little bit better. I seem to have gone off the rails a bit recently; whilst I still have some really excellent food days, the urge to gorge is coming on strong and my willpower hasn't been holding up, resulting in about as many bad food days. What you will notice (and it's not exactly a saving grace, but it's progress) is that these bad days used to be called "happy food days", and now they don't really make me that happy, they just make me a bit disappointed in myself!

In fact on the days when I eat well, I feel not only more energetic, but happier too. During my few days in Exmoor, I trained hard, ate very well and felt great for it. 

There are a few factors that I think have contributed to my eating downfall:

• The cumulative effect of seeing Easter Eggs every time I go food shopping.
• Limited edition KitKat chunkys
• My dairy-free baking experiments, often resulting in sizeable portions of muffins, cookies or cake
• Everybody else's silly, small appetites (or self-control, depending on how you look at it.. swings and roundabouts!)
• The fact that going (mostly) dairy-free has been like a small, fun challenge to find the naughtiest stuff I can that doesn't contain any dairy
• Having a bit more time to think about eating now that I'm being a bit more sensible with rest and recovery
• Feelings of guilt from eating so much crap means that I scrimp on actual, decent meals. Bad, downward spiral!
• Obsessive-compulsive hot-cooked chicken disorder 
• The discovery that Jaffa Cakes are dairy-free

I know: excuses, excuses! In all honesty, I've just lost a little bit of motivation recently and need to sort it out. Instead of focusing my food-making energy into creating some of brilliantly healthy meal, I'm favouring scoffing down something convenient and going baking crazy in the kitchen instead.

So, let's talk remedial actions. It's been a while since I set some goals and now is the time. 

1. Baking shall be strictly limited to ONCE per week and all baked goods must be shared.

2. I must make proper dinners and not just find random stuff like cereal bars, chicken wings and boiled eggs to eat.

3. Hot meat counter in any supermarket is BANNED until I'm back in a good eating regime.

4. Fruit count is always good but the vegetable count needs work. Vegetable snacks must be included in the lunch box and on the dinner plate.

5. Dark chocolate consumption is limited to weekends only.

As always, your support is welcomed. Give Egg a bag of cookies and she'll be happy for a day, but help her make healthy choices and she'll be happy forever.