¡Hola, amigas! I’m now 17 days in to my January reset, and I thought I’d check in today and talk about How the food aspect has been going. In short, it’s mostly been great, but there have been some challenging moments.

My main goals as far as food/drink were to avoid alcohol, added sugars, obvious junk foods (such as deep-fried items), and processed grains (like breads). That has been going well, although it’s not always easy to say no to those items. Let’s face it, when left to my own devices, booze, candy, french fries, and bread are basically my four main food groups. I love those things. And that is how I gained 100 lbs in grad school.

Some of the tough moments recently:

This past week, I had a catered lunch meeting where all I knew ahead of time was that there would be a vegetarian option provided for me. It turned out to be a boxed lunch from Panera with a Greek salad, a baguette w/butter, and a huge chocolate chip cookie. I took the salad out of the box and then closed it back up with the bread and the cookie inside, to hide them from myself. Last semester, I had a series of catered lunch meetings where the lunches always included extras like that: chips, cookies, brownies. GOOD ones. And no matter how healthy my intentions were, I’d always pick at the desserts bite by bite as the meetings went on until I’d eventually consumed every bite of the entire lunch (huge sandwich, bag of chips, brownie). Then I’d look at the calories online later and find I’d eaten, like, 1200 calories for lunch, then I’d pass out in a carb coma while trying to work afterward. Not smart. So! This time, I managed to save myself from the bread and the cookie and I stuck with the salad, only using half the dressing. It was great, and I didn’t feel the need to lie comatose on my own desk afterward, which meant I had a productive afternoon. I also looked up that Panera cookie later: 440 calories. You have GOT to be kidding me.

Thursday night, an old friend of my husband’s was in town and we all went out to dinner at my favorite local bar/restaurant. They have a really great battered & fried green bean appetizer that I always get and a veggie burger that I love. They also have a great bourbon selection and lots of fun cocktails. So that would be a normal night there for me: bourbon drink, friend green beans, veggie burger with fries. It was hard not to choose those things, but I wound up with a salad + veggie burger patty and a Diet Coke.

Last night, CW and I were in Earth Fare and he was picking out some beer, and I happened to see about four different beers I wanted to try (a pumpkin one I’d missed during the fall, two different gingerbread kinds, and …something else I forget now). It was honestly just a moment of minor frustration: I hadn’t been wanting a beer before we were there; I’m not even a huge beer person. As soon as we walked away from the display, I quit caring about the beer and grabbed a bottle of my favorite kombucha instead.

On another note, one more positive experience:

Thanks to Pinterest and Chrissy, I tried making jarred salads for the work week (see post header photo). I never understood these when I first saw photos of them on Pinterest because I had thought they were meant to be eaten out of the jar (which seems super awkward), but once I found out from Chrissy that they were meant to be dumped into a bowl, it suddenly all made sense. The lettuce stays fresh on the top and the dressing sits on the bottom layer and doesn’t get anything soggy. I ate these Tuesday through Friday at work and they stayed fresh and tasted good all week. I’m busily planning what to put in next week’s salads.

And even better news, I lost 2.8 pounds this week for a total of 7 pounds lost since New Year’s Eve. Woop woop! I hope everyone else’s January health efforts are going well, too.