This is the home-stretch; Today marks day 96 of the challenge. I've been trying to write this blog entry for the past 5 days or so. Something keeps coming up everytime I sit down to write it. Not sure what's going on there.
For the most part, the cigarette cravings have finally gone away. I still get the odd one here and there that makes me want to curl into the fetal positon and weep like a school-girl, but they're few and far between and I've learned to manage it relatively well. I started going to the gym about 2 months ago so I keep telling myself that if I smoke, the treadmill will just kill me harder than it already does.
Our portions are back to a more normal (for lack of a better word, I suppose) level. It helps a lot when we're planning our meals a few days to a week in advance. It's difficult to stick to because we both work, but we're doing well on that front also. We've also cut down a lot of late-night snacking which, I'm not sure if I mentioned, we did quite a lot of. Both of those are really positive. That's huge.
Since my last update, both Linds and I have been trying to bring lunch to work; We've been doing quite well. I figured, with Christmas coming up, it's probably not a good idea to buy a 6-8 dollar lunch every day. We've kind of found the balance (the "sweet-spot" if you want to get technical) on when to buy lunch stuff and what we're actually going to use. We still have a bit of work, but it's been quite a marginal improvement.
Speaking of Christmas, I'm a procrastinator. It's pretty safe to say that as of right now, December 6th (I should probably call my mother, seeing as how it's her birthday), I have no Christmas shopping done. And no ideas. I really need to get on that. I usually go home for Christmas, either a few days before or a few days after, and I've made the unfortunate habit of picking up most, if not all, of my gifts at the Walmart about an hour from my parents' place, which I hit after about 6 or 7 hours of driving.
Seeing as how today marks 96 days without fast food, I've made the executive decision that I'd like to attempt to continue this fast-food free lifestyle after the challenge is complete. Only with stuff like McDonalds, Wendy's etc... (So I'll still occasionally dine on my share of delectable chicken wings). I've found that of the things that I've stopped eating with this challenge, fast food is the thing I miss the least. It never even crossed my mind that "Oh hell, I really wish I had some McDonalds right now", like it did with Coke and Pepsi and Cigarettes. It wouldn't bother me if I never ate another burger from McDonalds again. Not that I'm trying to single out McDonalds or anything, the same would go for Burger King, they're just something everyone recognizes. This stems somewhat from the fact that I've learned that there's always a better option to just grabbing a burger. Always. You're always told that fast food is bad for you, but as I mentioned a while ago, you don't realize how bad it is until you see how you feel when you don't eat it for an extended period of time.
The other day I looked at my very first picture in my picture-a-day catalog. Wow. My face has changed quite a lot over the course of 75 to 80 days. Over the next few days I plan on pulling them off of the camera (I don't have a way to get them off the SD card, we've lost the camera cable somehow) and hopefully uploading them as a Youtube video in time for the challenge to finish. Unless I just procrastinate it, as I have a habit of doing. I'm sure I'll get around to it.
Four more days.
We've succeeded.
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