The Plan - And Other 4-Letter Words

Lots of great things have started with a Plan. It gets a capital so that you can see how truly important having a Plan is. The trick is, the really great thing happens when the Plan goes completely out the window and you wind up flying by the seat of your pants. You'd never have been there if it wasn't for the Plan, and you wouldn't be having nearly as much fun if everything had gone according to Plan.

So this post is about the Plan. The rest of the them are going to be about what happens when the Plan goes off the rails.

The Plan - And Other 4-Letter Words

I'm tired of diets. That's kind of where the Plan started. With the realization that they call it a diet because all of the other 4-letter words were taken. Diets are evil (another 4-letter word, see?). What happens when I go on a diet is that I think about food (the 4-letter thing is really becoming a pattern) All. The. Time. Normally I'm not. I mean I enjoy food, probably wouldn't need a diet if I didn't. But it's not an obsessive thing... except when I'm dieting. Then it's everywhere. Thinking about all the things I can't have and want. Ever notice when you're on a diet you crave things you don't even really like that much? It's that whole can't have it so I want it thing. But mostly I could pass that off as normal-ish (my life is kind of normal-ish so it wasn't that hard). Then I got a series of small wake up calls in the form of a little angel.

See I'm a single mom. Minime, as I call her, spends half the week at my house and half the week at her dad's. Now I didn't put her on a diet too and kept making her food she enjoyed. But like the Little Miss SmartyPants she is, she noticed. And she started talking about food a lot too, and weight, and diet. Did I mention she's 6? This was horrifying to me. No way was I going to pass along all of my food, weight, and body issues to my daughter. No. Freaking. Way.

When it all hit home I knew I had to do something. I wanted to keep losing weight but I wanted to do it in a way that wasn't intrusive, wasn't noticeable, and taught my daughter that grown women weren't in fact on diets all the time. Food is great, some food is amazing (and anyone who reads my other blog knows that I don't use awesome lightly).

So I had to sit down and define what eating healthy meant to me. For some people that means no sugar. I can respect that. I think they're absolutely nuts, but I can respect that level of insanity. I like the idea of everything in moderation a lot more. There are some really sound principles behind that line of thinking. So I decided to combine that with my dislike of chemicals and processing.

The last part of the Plan was inspired by a friend I ran into while grocery shopping yesterday. She said she really admired the fact that I even bothered to cook when it was just me at home (which it is 3-4 nights a week!). It's true... it's very tempting to just go with a bowl of cereal, or toast, or something really easy. I won't lie, I've totally had chips and salsa for dinner (and maybe for breakfast too but that's the great part of being an adult!) Truth is I really enjoy cooking. Even when it's just me. And a mini-conversation I had with a friend on Twitter today made me realize that some of the things I do might not be common practice. Maybe you've thought of it but don't think you can, or just need the encouragement. So the final part of the Plan is this blog.

Odds are the Plan is going to evolve as time goes on. That's the nature of life-long Plan things... they change.