tough enough?

so we have a whole lot of interesting things happening right now....most are small - last day of the grading period for one, minor stomach bug for two - but one is major....tiff's surgery is tomorrow and as always when something like this comes up, it leads to some reflection.  being the crazy  person that i am, i decided that today was the perfect day to kick off my 10 day master cleanse.....because, why not right???  i'm having this strange compulsion to TEST myself in some way, and clearly right now that is NOT going to be with any physical exercise....which is USUALLY how i push my  limits.  to go along with all of this MENTAL exercise, i thought this might be a good time to try something completely different.  by now you know my take on food, and originally i was going to try to follow the CLEAN cleanse.....its much more "food" friendly - and includes a lot of fruit/veggie juicing and one meal a day - the downside is that you have to do it for like 21 days and its VERY labor intensive.....i bought some of the foods you need for it and made my way thru 2 of the juice/smoothies.....and realized i just wouldnt go thru the HASSLE of making myself something with a million ingredients 3x a day....so it was destined for failure before it started.....

i did a little more reading, and then called my go-to for crazy ass ideas....kris' college roommate and my old partner in crime, gary....we actually have the same tattoo, but that's a whole nother story :)  i would say that gary is one of those people  who i can call if i ever need someone to unequivocally say YES ABSOLUTELY DO IT....to pretty much anything!!  he's also a writer, and an athlete, and a freaky health guy.....so i knew he'd done cleanses in the past.....he recommended, after telling me i was crazy to do this at all, the master cleanse ONLY because its so EASY.....3 ingredients.....i can DO THAT...no thinking.  the hard part about doing a cleanse like this is that you have to be MENTALLY TOUGH.....nothing solid for 10 days....and NO CAFFEINE.....just an assload of this lemonade mixture.  the theory behind any cleanse is that our bodies accumulate TOXINS from the environment and the horrible food we consume.....we then become addicted to all those crappy things and our bodies not only dont function properly, but they CRAVE these bad things.....i'm oversimplifying of course, but the end result of the cleanse is to have flushed the toxins from your body so that it RESETS itself and starts functioning on the proper level again......and hopefully you feed it better things.  there is a whole movement out there that FORKS OVER KNIVES is bringing to the forefront (i hope) whereby people are being educated about the fact that DIET affects EVERYTHING.....poor nutrition is a contributing factor to most major diseases and the crisis of healthcare in our country.  its just one more example in a long line recently that have persuaded me to not only stick to my vegetarian lifestyle, but also to do better at getting back to WHOLE foods.....AND to make more of an effort to get the boys to understand WHY i am making these choices.  another can of worms.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.  Leo Tolstoy

how can i in all good conscience REJECT our fast food, overprocessed, nasty ass western diet for MYSELF, and yet feed it to my kids?????  herein lies the RUB.....i can say all day long that its bad to eat fast food, but when its 6pm and i'm still not home and the kids are hungry after practice, of course im gonna ORDER PIZZA.....hello.  we literally eat more pizza than anyone else ON EARTH!!  why?  because its easy.....its yummy....and somehow i feel like its not as bad for them as mcdonalds.....i have no basis for this fact other than its not mechanically separated meat, and it makes me feel better about eating out.  but the struggle is still the same......i was the  poster child for doritoes and coke before PRACTICE growing up....if its any kind of processed potato product that you can slap some fake flavor on, then its for ME!!  and its all so yummy that i hate telling my kids they cant have it.....because that makes me a hypocrite AND a crazy mom.  i used to make fun of my friends who didnt keep "junk" in their house, because all their kids ran to my junk drawer when they came over....removing the 'junk" doesnt make it any less desirable - it just makes it harder to get.  and usually all the more desirable for not being available, right??  like any other thing we aren't allowed to have.

so my job now as i see it, is to attempt to EDUCATE them about WHY i am choosing to eat the way i do and to offer them healthier options.  but i'm not enforcing my diet on them.....i'm not even enforcing it on myself all the time :)  maybe 15 years from now i will look back and wish i had made them all vegetarians......but right now i just cant do it.  what i can do is put out more salad and less boxed food with dinner.  and try to prepare better meals.  and show them that you can still enjoy food, even if its not smothered in fake cheese.  at least thats my plan.  its HILARIOUS to me that my blog is about FOOD today.....again, not what i was planning....but hey, i havent eaten all day, so of course i'm going to be obsessing right now!!  kris used to always make fun of me because i could talk about FOOD all day....i loved it....you could say i was passionate even.....and i still do absolutely love it - i probably would have licked the screen tonight when the dominoes cheesy bread commercial came on for the 20th time, but my laptop is plugged in and it was too late by the time i got up!!  what i have come to realize over the last little while though, is that food for me is an addiction.....maybe not a hardcore one, but it definitely something i have an unhealthy relationship with.  i spend ridiculous amounts of time and energy thinking planning and actually eating every day!!  it paralyzes me sometimes....i cant think past it.....and that cant be good for me or anyone else.  so i'm going to attempt to come to grips with it.....finally.  it should be interesting at the very least.....so see if i can actually make it all 10 days, and more importantly, to see if i can do it without ripping someone's head off.  food shouldn't control me - i should control it.....yes food can be delicious and it can add an element to any gathering or event....but at its most basic level FOOD IS FUEL for our body.  and we need to get back to treating it like that.....or at least make an attempt.

One should eat to live, not live to eat. Moliere

this is where i am today....hopefully i will find something else to blog about during this week and not the cheese curls im sure i will be dreaming about tonight.  in my mind, this is an internal battle that i need to win.....to get some perspective on my relationship with food, if nothing else.....and also maybe in some small way to empathize with those who are going thru things much tougher than this.....it seems to be the least i can do.