{"id":2385,"date":"2016-10-28T15:03:38","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T15:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/?p=2385"},"modified":"2017-02-21T22:09:45","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T22:09:45","slug":"diet-hopes-day-1-getting-out-of-the-starting-gate-do-i-really-want-to-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/diet-hopes-day-1-getting-out-of-the-starting-gate-do-i-really-want-to-bother\/","title":{"rendered":"Diet Hopes Day 1, Barrier #1: Getting Out of the Starting Gate: Do I Really Want to Bother?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"starting-gate\"<\/p>\n

Step 1–Getting My Head Behind My Actions<\/span><\/h3>\n

Ever made a good eating intention and then, not too long afterwards, come to the sudden realization that you’ve forgotten all about it?!<\/p>\n

For example, let\u2019s say it’s lunchtime, you’re on the road going from here to there, and you’re starving.\u00a0\u00a0 Naturally, you pull into the drive-through restaurant waiting with open arms for people just like you.\u00a0 But then you suddenly remember:\u00a0 “Didn’t I promise a couple months ago to ditch lunchtime fast food?”<\/p>\n

What happened between then and now that your most earnest intention isn’t even on the radar screen, much less a fixture in your food life?<\/p>\n

This is the second in a series of posts about nurturing our resolutions from seeds to regular, natural and easeful parts of our lives.\u00a0 There’s a fair bit of territory that lies between setting a new health resolution and seeing it show up on a regular basis.\u00a0 That’s why I invite you to journey with me as I travel through that territory and navigate the obstacles by being better prepared and positioning myself so I can succeed.\u00a0 I discovered a lot and think (and hope) much of what I learn will help you, too.<\/p>\n

As mentioned in the last post<\/a>, when I saw the recipes for Homemade Almond Milk<\/a> on Nicolett Miller’s nutritional therapy blog, it must have been the tenth time I had seen the recipe over the past several years–and the tenth time I had wanted to start making almond milk.\u00a0 But this time, I stopped long enough to explore why I hadn’t been able to bring that hope to fruition.<\/p>\n

Obstacle #1, I realized, was just deciding whether making my own almond milk was worth the bother.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The main reason I wanted homemade milk was to reduce the number of artificial additives in my diet.\u00a0 Certainly a worthy goal, but there was a powerful reason not to bother:\u00a0 Yet more<\/em> time spent on food prep.<\/p>\n

For many years, I’ve worked to reduce my exposure to artificial preservatives, additives and other chemicals as much as possible.\u00a0 We’re exposed to hundreds and thousands of chemicals each day<\/i>, most of which we don’t even know about–and no one has ever tested what happens to humans exposed to all those chemicals both in combination with one another and over the span of many years.\u00a0 My thinking is that at least I can control the food I eat, which is why I’ve transitioned to a real, whole foods, mostly organic diet.\u00a0 Except for my almond milk.\u00a0 I drink a couple cups a day and each time I poured a glass, I saw this list of ingredients:<\/p>\n

\"almond-milk-ing-label-unsweetened-original\"<\/p>\n

Certainly not as bad as ingesting lead-tainted water, but why ingest all of those things at all when almond milk can be made with just almonds, water, salt and a date?<\/p>\n

\"clock-yellow\"Lack of time is the big reason to continue ingesting “all those things.”\u00a0 As much as I want a clean diet, I had to honestly ask myself, “Were the offending ingredients in commercial almond milk bad enough to justify the time to make a pure version?\u00a0 Did I really want to bother making my own almond milk and add another food prep activity to my life?”<\/p>\n

The answers to those questions are critical.\u00a0 If I couldn\u2019t get my head firmly behind my actions, I wouldn’t get out of the starting gate.\u00a0 And I surely wouldn’t have the motivation to figure out the milk-making process and get in the habit of doing it two or three times a week for the long term.<\/p>\n

After some reflection, I realized that at this point, I really couldn’t answer those questions.\u00a0 I hadn’t made almond milk and really didn’t know whether it could be accomplished efficiently and woven into my food life smoothly.\u00a0 However I did feel 100% certain that it was worthwhile to experiment and gauge the time, difficulty and expense involved.\u00a0 And that’s all I needed to get out of the starting gate.\u00a0 I couldn’t see that I had anything to lose by experimenting, but there was a lot to gain if my experiment worked.<\/p>\n

So forward we go!\u00a0 Join me tomorrow’s for the next step of the journey:\u00a0 Recipe Frustration #)*+^#$%#!!<\/p>\n

What about you?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n