I honestly thought that tomorrow was April 1st and had ideas of writing all about how Michael probably wished I was playing an April Fools joke on him with the meal plan for this week. You see, I've put us on a cleansing diet this week. Last week every pair of pants I put on made me feel awful. Then I bought a pair of pants (in my usual size) through an online sale for a place I've always wanted to buy pants from but haven't ever because they are EXPENSIVE. Those pants arrived Friday and I was really sad when I tried them on. They fit, but it ain't pretty. They're too tight but if I'd gone up a size those would be too big. So I threw my hands up and yelled "THAT'S IT!". The food in this house is out of control. It's not that it's so bad for us as much as I have been eating so much of it. I told Michael that I was going on a cleansing diet for this week and he said "sign me up!". No gluten, no sugar, no caffeine, no animal products and no alcohol for a week. Then Michael said "wait a minute. no cheese?".Hey, I gave him an out. I told him he didn't have to do this if he didn't want to. I probably shouldn't have started our first meal of the cleanse with something like kelp noodles. I felt like my ass was telling me it was just time to lighten up and thought what a great way to start out the first week of April. Except it is not April. But who cares. No gluten, no sugar, no caffeine, no animal products and no alcohol for a week. This sounds like it would be so dang easy for me, but I will tell you that I have been tempted. There was a bunch of food left over from an event at work and they invited the employees down to eat it. There were three kinds of cookies. I ate strawberries and grapes. Same thing. But I was really surprised by my reaction to the sight of all that food. The craving train hit hard. Besides the cookies, they had lots of vegetarian friendly items, all of which were wrapped around some sort of bread. I was slightly appalled at myself because of how badly I wanted to eat that stuff wrapped in bread. I have grown an addiction to bread products. I don't even know how I did that. I eat corn tortillas at the house and have a bagel on Sundays. But if you set a basket of fresh bread any where near my face, I will eat it. My office at work has had a constant supply of cookies, candy, and muffins since Christmas. I have said yes to every cookie, cupcake and sweettart. I used to those soft fluffy foods to comfort me through the winter. Actually, I think I just now realized that's what I've been doing. Breakthrough!

I've done this cleansing diet before. It's a great re-set button. I've learned a few things about doing one of these re-sets. Right off the bat you're hit with all the things you can't eat. This diet is so easy if you can flip that mindset around to see all the things you can eat. Also, flavor is important. Spices, spices, spices. I had to plan meals that I thought Michael would eat. He likes curries and tacos. We'll have butternut squash and chickpea curry on night and black bean quinoa sweet potato tacos another night. There's a potato and broccoli skillet meal planned and a stir fry with corn noodles. Somewhere in the middle of all this I hope to regain some control over my eating habits. Well really it's more about regaining some constraint in eating the foods I just don't need to be eating.

Except I just sent a check to Stephanie for three boxes of Thin Mints.