Ta Da - 30 days without junk food!

I actually finished this a couple of weeks ago, but figured I'd post about it as completing the 30 days was one of my big accomplishments for the month. I didn't post about it at the start as I really didn't believe I'd be able to do it, but I just took it a day at a time and hung in there!

I got the idea from Jen Hatmaker's book 'Seven', which is the author's account of seven different self-denial projects, each lasting a month and based around the number 7 in some way. Her first goal was to restrict herself to seven different foodstuffs for a month - which was extremely hard for her as she loves her food! I was pretty awed at the thought of someone managing that, and, although I certainly wasn't about to try it myself, I did realise that if I cut out all junk food for thirty days that in itself would be very good for me. I was doing far too much snacking. Still, I couldn't face doing it, so I pushed the idea away for a while.

Then, the day before Good Friday, I tore my last pair of decent trousers and had to get new ones - which meant facing the fact that I'd gone up a size and really needed to do something about my eating habits. So, reluctantly, the next day I started resisting the temptation to reach for the crisps/chocolate/biscuits... any of the stuff I loved to stuff in my face at any spare moment. I did have the 30-day goal in mind, but I figured there was no way I'd last out that long, so I just concentrated on taking it one day at a time. I could get to the end of the day, surely? And then see how I got on then? I concentrated on finding different ways to deal with it when I was hungry, bored, tired, fed up, tempted... I could snack on healthier stuff according to my rules, so I got some BBQ turkey pieces and some tinned fruit, both of which were really helpful. But it took a *lot* of willpower. By the time I'd made it through a week, though, it was starting to look possible, and by then I had some momentum - after all, I didn't want to waste all those days I'd already built up towards the goal.

There were a few exceptions I allowed myself through the month, so here they are in a spirit of full disclosure:

• I had a few flavoured Tic-Tacs, on two different occasions.
• We went to the cinema once during the month, and I shared a salted popcorn with the children (smallest size they did, but of course even the small sizes are pretty big these days)
  
• When one of the staff nurses at work gave me two plain digestive biscuits with my coffee, I ate them. It was a kindly-meant gesture and I figured it wasn't worth potentially hurting her feelings just for the sake of two plain biscuits. If they'd been chocolate, I'd have felt that was pushing things too much.
  

That was it. Personally, I'm happy with those as exceptions. I didn't have any chocolate, any crisps, any cake, any biscuits... do you know how unheard-of it is for me to go that long without chocolate?! Still can't believe I did it!

So, I made it through the 30 days - during which time I also cut down from two bagels to one at lunchtime on the days I was at home, and upped the number of 10-minute sessions I did on the exercise bike, all of which was enough for me to lose 5lb. Since then, I've been allowing myself snacks again, but concentrating on not going crazy with them - which is a challenge in itself, but so far I've managed to keep my eating sensible overall.

So there you go - I did it. Now to see how well I do with eating reasonably over the rest of the year. I'd still like to lose a few more pounds, though I've been making progress.