THANKFUL FRIDAY

I put Michael and I on a cleansing diet when I got back from Woods Hole. So for the past two weeks there has been no alcohol, gluten, sugar, and no animal products in our meals. Mostly. I haven’t been a food police. I left in caffeine because I only drink one cup of coffee in the mornings and Michael has a thing of tea. Michael usually makes chicken salad to eat on crisp bread for his lunches and he’s kept that routine. I ate a bagel on Wednesday because it was work birthday treats and the bagels came from Meshuggah’s which is the closest to a New York bagel that you will find in the midwest. I don’t hate myself. I ate the bagel, but my food intake with the bagel exception, has stayed within the guidelines.

And it hasn’t been all that hard to do.

The reality is that for the most part, we tend to eat a vegan/vegetarian diet through the weeknights anyway. My lunch is leftover dinner. There’s a night that includes shrimp or fish. Taco nights include soyrizo and cheese. Those things have been easily replaced or left out. I think the idea of a ‘cleansing’ diet makes people focus on the things on the list they cannot have instead of seeing all that they can have. That’s what makes it so daunting, but when you already mostly eat that way it’s not a big deal. I think back to the very first time I put myself on a cleansing diet and how truly awful the experience was. Chris and I were still in Oklahoma, living with his mom. Oklahoma was not a place for vegetarians, let alone vegans and I got really bogged down by the things I couldn’t eat. I read so many labels. Grocery shopping was a full day adventure. I knew so little about food and nutrition then. I am actually surprised by the amount of stuff I didn’t know about the food I was putting into my body. Doing the cleansing diet changed the way I eat and think about nourishment.

I come back to this diet every once in a while as a reset. Michael has been all on board and rather a good sport about it, even suffering through a tofu vegetable stir-fry. He has incentives though for doing this diet with me. The last day of the cleanse is the day he has to have bloodwork done for a checkup and he will be going in with three weeks of clean eating. My take away from this round of a cleansing diet is how we deal with the weekends. When I made up the first week’s meal plan, I got to Saturday and Sunday and Michael said “what about lunches?” More often than not, we eat lunches out on the weekends and we buy rich, fancy ingredients to cook for dinners. There’s also a fair amount of booze. This cleansing diet has placed a spotlight on how our weekends can be so unmindful both nutritionally and financially. While I might be spending a teensy bit more on groceries, we are saving more than that in eating out fees. This is good practice for when we get back from our moose hunting trip because we plan to go on a financial diet and tighten up our spending/budget.

I want a new drive way. They are not cheap.

In the past, I would probably (and have probably) used my Thankful Friday post to be grateful that a cleansing diet is almost over. This time around is different. I don’t feel like I’ve made a great sacrifice or that limiting my meals to a strict vegan/gluten free foods has been a hardship. At the end of week two, I don’t think I can say I’ve lost any weight. There are no drastic physical changes. I’m less puffy maybe. I feel physically the way I should feel, which is good. I know from previous experiences that my body feels better on this kind of diet anyway. My gratitude this week comes from the insights I have gleaned on how we spend our money and the crap we eat on weekends. I am also grateful for how I have treated myself during the past two weeks. I’ve been able to set an intention for clean eating without guilting myself or binding myself. I’ve given myself some grace (see above about a bagel). I’ve treated myself with kindness and this is a big thing because I’m my own worst enemy.

But I will say that our diet ends on the day we have reservations for Le Fou Frog (a famously popular KC French restaurant) and I am very much looking forward to the escargot in herbed butter. Especially the butter.