Bad Habits

The more I learn in school, the easier it is to make better dietary choices. When you start incorporating fresh vegetables and greens into your daily habits, it seems like you may be missing out on other foods, but your body knows what's getting and your body responds positively. After a weekend long detox retreat, I immediately went to the farmer's market to stock up on the foods we ate at the retreat, prepared to keep the cleansing process going. Of course, maintaining the level of clean that we enjoyed at the retreat was not easy at home, between work, social engagements, homework and other events, it was difficult to find the time to prepare every meal but I tried my best.
Then I went on a short trip and returned to an empty refridgerator. Unable to go shopping that day, I had to make due with what was available. However, that day I found myself in a stressful and unhappy situation at work and I turned to the candy dish. Feeling rather dejected and lacking the willpower to stop myself, I ate far too many bad chocolates. Their taste was not what I was craving, it was the soothing nature of the texture of the chocolates that I felt I was needing. When I left work, I felt awful, but now instead of just an emotional awful, it was a physical awful. And when I went to bed last night, I vowed to never do this to myself again. My body felt sick, like a dump. I had filled my body with garbage and it was letting me know that this was no way to treat myself.
Sometimes new habits are easy to maintain. Sometimes, though, we fall back into one. The good news of a truly effective good habit, is that you are reminded how much you would rather maintain that new way of doing things when you try the old pattern on for a day. So next time I have a bad day at work and feel the temptation to eat that chocolate, I can recall yesterday, remember how much I do not want to feel that way again and throw that temptation out the door. An emotional pitfall does not improve when you feed it unhealthily.