80/20

The relationship between my moods and my behavior is getting less and less obvious. The reason for doing this experiment, and keeping this journal is getting less and less clear. I had this idea when I started that I would write this really great thing, that would proof the worth-whileness of doing all the thing our momma's told us to do: play out side, go to bed, brush your teeth.

But it turns out all I write is whiney drivel. And it turns out maybe there isn't as strong a correlation as I thought.

But I'm going to keep doing it for a while. Whether or not the day to day ups and downs mirror each other, there is this fact to keep me going. On almost any day of this program...whether I am doing well or not...I am doing and feeling better than I was before I started this program.

So how could I stop?

Yesterday I, once again, planned to get a perfect score. But Sweetie and I decided to have lunch together and we ended up going to an Indian place with an all you can eat lunch buffet. I love Indian food. I won't go back to this place again. It really wasn't very good. Somehow the food tasted "trashy." I can't say what I mean when I say that, but I kept thinking it while I was eating it. Usually, that is the word that comes to mind when I taste papaya.

I can't eat papaya because one time when I was in Africa and fresh food that was safe to eat was scarce, except for papaya. So I ate a lot of it. I didn't know that it is a mild laxative. You wouldn't even notice if you just at a serving or two once in a while. But I was eating big amounts regularly, and my insides just sort of gave up on working properly for awhile.

Now just a hint of papaya taste in a juice or fruit salad kind of makes me cringe. I had that same cringey feeling eating this Indian food. But it wasn't such a cringey feeling that I didn't eat it. I cleaned my plate. But I didn't go back for a second helping of saag, which is my absolute favorite Indian dish. That's unheard of. I always go back for more saag.

I did go back for a second samosa. And I ate some funny little things that I can only describe as deep-fried mashed potatoes. And some chicken, and a dish with mushrooms peppers and cheese, and naan, and curried vegetables. All together I ate way too much and lost all three of my food points before 1:00 pm. So of course, the rest of the day I just ate whatever I felt like eating, since I'd lost my points already.

I feel discouraged this morning because I weighed myself. I'm not supposed to weigh myself as part of this plan, but I can't help doing it once in a while. It seems like if I'm making such efforts to eat well and not eat junk food and eat the right mix of foods and blah blah blah...then I should loose some weight!

But tomorrow is day 20. Twenty days is plenty of time to lose 5 pounds, if a person is focused on it. Of course, I'm not focused on it. But I am making some effort in the eating healthier and eating less direction, so I expect to at least have dropped a pound or two. Actually, I had dropped two pounds at some point, but now I've gained them back. I'm not supposed to care. Being thinner is not the goal here. But I do kind of feel like, "what's the point?"

I am tempted to just eat whatever I want again today. I could still get a pretty good score. I could get 12 if I did everything just right. But the fact is I haven't yet gotten a 15. Not one perfect score in almost 20 days. I have to wonder if I'm really serious about this project, with no perfect scores. It seems like the real test would come when I had a week or more of perfect scores. How would I feel then?

According to my chart, the points I miss most often are the ones for eating only approved foods, and the one for drinking a 3rd bottle of water.

I guess I'll try for a perfect score today. I'll try to eat right and not worry about being fat.

I was talking to Sweetie last night about the 80/20 rule. That's something we learn about in sales training. In any situation, the theory goes, most of your results come from a small amount of the total energy you put getting those results. If you can identify that 20 percent of effort that results in 80 percent of your results, you can let all the other stuff go.

I guess in sales the idea is that instead of all the other stuff, you could just do more of that 20 percent, and increase your results without working yourself to death. But I like the underachiever implication of just finding that 20 percent, and being happy with that.

And I think that's what I'm doing with my body and my fitness level most of the time. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being my perfect dream body and 1 being as bad a shape as I could possibly be in, I think I'm about an 8. That is, I'm at 80% out of 100%. And out of all the effort I could possibly put into being in shape and fit and trim and thin and beautiful, I probably only put in about 20%.

And maybe I'm just going to be happy with that.