Adrian: Day 41, Cravings

I've been craving fast food a lot lately.  I was flipping through a slow cooker recipe book this morning, looking for a good chicken curry recipe, when I started daydreaming about Japanese style curry, and Indian Curry.  I snapped out of it and saw a recipe for sweet and sour chicken and then I started daydreaming again about Chinese take-out.  Later in the afternoon, I took a short nap, and dreamed that I was stuffing my face with chocolate.  I felt guilty but I didn't stop. When I woke up, I was relieved that it was just a dream.

I think what's most appealing about these foods is the convenience.  When I was daydreaming, I wasn't sitting there imagining delicious tastes and smells.  I was visualizing completely prepared dishes.  

A couple months ago, it was very easy to get a variety of completely prepared dishes.  We'd just log onto yelp.com, figure out what kind of ethnic food we wanted, find a place with a good user review rating, and then drive to the restaurant, order, wait 10 minutes and then eat.  Flipping through recipes these days, the food takes so much longer to appear.  First, Emiko and I have to decide on what dish we want to share.  Then, we have to make a grocery list, drive out to the grocery store, come home, prep the kitchen, divvy up the tasks, and then start cooking.  Most of the time, the food comes out quite well, but sometimes it doesn't.  Also, we've been pretty much eating the same stuff; we don't vary our food all that much, or that often.  Variety takes a lot more work and effort, and we haven't had much time as it is.

Things have been going pretty smoothly for us lately, at least when it comes to sticking to our diets.  But I'm really starting to see how changing our diets (and habits in general) can be a big mental game.  The key seems to be repetition.  We're almost halfway through now, and I've been wondering - "Will 90 days really be enough time for me to change?"  Even though it's been a bit tough at times, and I've doubted myself, its been a much more fulfilling and engaging way to live than what I'm used to.