Major Accomplishment!

The item that I can now cross off my list as of yesterday is "Not eat out for a week." Honestly, I wasn't sure that I could do it, but you know what? It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought once I set it as a goal! It actually felt really good yesterday knowing that I had gone SEVEN days without a lunch out or a bagel from Panera or even ordering a pizza!

I can't say that all of the meals that I cooked were perfectly healthy, but at least they were home cooked meals. One step at a time here! I am surprised at how good I feel after not eating out. I would always feel guilty for eating out because it didn't feel like a treat. I always felt like it was out of convenience and then I would feel guilty for wasting the money when I could have probably made a few really good home cooked meals for the same price. (not to mention how embarrassed I started to feel that the workers at Panera know me by name!) I want to get to the point where going out to eat is something special that we do, not the norm. I'm not even sure how we fell into this habit of eating out so much. I think that a lot of it started when we were renovating the house in N.C. Our kitchen was only borderline usable so we definitely ate out ... a LOT. I think a big part of it was also to escape from the chaos of our house being a construction zone and not having any heat, etc.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it's probably always about it being an escape. Even now. I would go through the drive through at Chick-fil-A because if I went home and tried to figure out what was for lunch I would feel guilty for not planning meals or writing out a shopping list and it would just make me feel more like I was failing at being a good wife and mother. The ironic thing is, that getting take out for lunch didn't let me escape from what I was feeling for any longer than it would take me to eat. After that I would feel even worse because I would feel like I should be doing a better job meal planning AND I would feel guilty for spending the money and not eating very healthily.

It's funny how sometimes just writing something out makes you look at your behaviors in a different way.

Well, I know that I felt much better this past week than I have in a long time, so my goal is to keep this up! I want dining out to be a treat, not a guilt trip! Now... to figure out what I'm going to tackle today....