Yesterday I was doing some work for one of my jobs before heading to the gym. I go to a turbo kick boxing class every Tuesday night (the highlight of my day). Now, by my admitting this, you may have some fear over my fierceness. “You want to go to McDonalds for dinner?” Round house kick to the face! But rest assured, this class mostly consists of dancing with decorative punches and kicks.
Anyways, I was hungry on my way to class, so I stopped at an AMPM to pick up a snack. In an ideal world, I would have purchased a hearty protein bar, right? Wrong. The protein bars at AMPM are crazy expensive (over $3 a bar)! I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that much. Instead, I bought a Twix PB, figuring that the peanut butter would provide some good protein. The whole class I felt gross. And the whole time I knew it was that darn Twix. I kept thinking “never again”.
Later that night my ordeal with the Twix bar got me to thinking about how my eating habits have changed. Back in the day, my favorite snack was a ridiculously large Dr. Pepper and a bag of peanut butter M&M’s. I always thought my friends who ordered water at restaurants were kind of wimpy. I think what really shifted how I eat was my year in England. The first thing to go was soda. I was a self-avowed Dr. Pepper addict (I even made a short film about it for a class), but soon upon arriving in the UK realized that it was very expensive. Basically, my food budget was such that it was a choice to eat food consistently, or have soda. Food won. Eventually, it got to the point that I didn’t like the taste of soda. Even to this day, my stomach revolts if I ingest any. Literally. It starts yelling to me, almost in the stylings of Samuel L. Jackson. “Woman, why the #%&* are you putting this crap into me?”
OK, so why am I telling you all this? Am I trying to wow you all with my healthy eating and will-power? No. I still eat lots of unhealthy food (maybe not quite so much processed food) and as evidenced by the story above, my quitting soda didn’t require any will-power, just circumstances. I’m writing this, because I am amazed at how much I can change. Things that are so important one year can shift and become non-existent in my life. One day I can paper my wall with ads, pictures, etc. from the film “Titanic”, learn the song on piano, record ridiculous answering machine messages with “Titanic” trivia, dress up as the main character when she is icey and in the water for Halloween, and the next day laugh at how wooden the writing is in that film. (Note: the above example is purely hypothetical. I mean, who would do that? Who would watch the movie 7 times in the theater? ) My friends and I were talking the other night and we ended up briefly discussing how much we change and because of that our interactions with others are always changing. Even though life can seem stagnant, there is always some sort of movement going on. And I find hope in that.
Leave a Reply