Knowing What Works For You and Staying True To It

It's five days into February and I'm feeling pretty good about the start of the month but I am already making adjustments to make sure I end the month stronger + fitter + healthier = sexier.  I need a change in my eating plan as much as I needed a change in my exercise routine.  I had been eating a vegan diet for about 8 months, but not because I had adopted a vegan lifestyle.  It started as a 21-Day detox and I played around with it off and on after that until I found myself saying "I eat vegan" at every offer of fried meats and homemade macaroni and cheese.  So as a result, I don't really miss meat and dairy but find that I need something else because I'm making a lifestyle change and I'm not sure I've bought into the idea that I will eat vegan for life.

So I started looking into other ways of changing my "eating style".  I considered trying the Shred diet, I've been doing research on the Paleo diet, then there is also Clean Eating and the Belly Fat Cure.  Now that by no means is the list of all the things I've tried in the past.  For example, Weight Watcher's Online is missing, MyFitnessPal, SparkPeople and LoseIt are the free online food journal/calorie counters I've tried too.  Well I say all this to say, I know what works for me and I need to stay true to it.  See I do much better with eating styles that include rules of what you eat verses ones that have you journal every bite you eat.  Food journalling diets are very successful BUT FOR ME, I was thinking about food more and also I tended to eat "bad" foods more because they were allowed.  Meaning, I ate empty calories because I could because I could "budget" them in.  Verses with rules, it was easier to decline the foods if I they aren't on my "list" of acceptable foods.  Now the diets where you are given specific meals to eat each day don't work for me only because I'm not good at planning well enough in advance to have all the foods on hand.  I much prefer to have foods I eat in the frig and make a "game time decision" about what I'm eating at that moment.  I guess it makes me feel spontaneous, LOL.  Maybe that makes me an "ad lib dieter" or a "spontaneous eater".  I don't know, but having a catchy phrase for it doesn't matter, what matters is that I know what works for me and I need to stay true to it. ;-)

Time for dinner so let me go check the frig (LOL),
Lynnell

"Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it."  - Hardy D. Jackson

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song" - Maya Angelou

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway.  You'll be damned if you do and damned if you don't." - Eleanor Roosevelt