I got caught unprepared yesterday. Life happens….. to all of us. I have had a busy, stress filled week and my own needs get away from me sometimes. We all have those times. You would think I learned that by now, but I always tease Dr. Jack that when it comes to learning things, I am a turtle 🐢.
It was a busy week and I had a couple of stressful days thrown in. On top of that, I had to work my second job all day Saturday and I didn’t have time to pick up fresh vegetables, salad fixings or much else during the later part of the week. I know what you are going to say, I work at Walmart, how hard is it to just pick up stuff before I leave. I don’t know how to answer that, except to say that when I leave my house at six thirty in the morning, and don’t return until ten thirty at night? I just want to go home, because tomorrow I am doing it all again.
It was that kind of week. So yesterday, I didn’t have much to choose from. I left for work without a lunch. Didn’t wake up early enough for breakfast, was over tired, and sleeep deprived, and there is the recipe for disaster. During my lunch break, I decided to buy a prepared salad. It had chicken croutons, cheese and some creamy dressing. I didn’t use the dressing, croutons or cheese.
I had a lemon wedge and got a small container of olive oil. In a word? Disgusting. Blahhhhhhhhhh….. it tasted awful. I am not sure what they do to that lettuce before they pack it up but it was nasty and I can’t even discuss the what they claimed was chicken without cringing. I ate a little bit of it but just couldn’t go on. I kept thinking how spoiled I have become in my yummy salads with all their fresh chopped fixings.
My daughter works at the store part time too and she offered me half an apple. Now, I don’t eat a lot of fruit. One of the first thing I learned from Dr. Jack, is sugar is sugar. But I was starving and so I ate it. I can eat fruit any time I want but it slows my weight loss and in the middle of this seemingly never ending plateau, I avoid it. I kept thinking it must have been forever since I had an apple and were they always this overly sweet? How did I not know that before?
i figured that my really low sugar diet made it seem a lot more sugary than I thought. But the weirdest things happened. First, I know that there were weirdo preservatives in that salad. My lips tingled all afternoon, my finger tips felt funky, like itchy. But also, all I could think about all afternoon was sugar. I started noticing it all around where normally I can just ignore. I felt hungry all afternoon, even though I had eaten. Sugar produces cravings! More and more cravings. It was a tough afternoon. I drank a lot of water trying to flush out the icky feeling and squelch the sugar monster. But it didn’t help much and it seemed everywhere around me people were eating sweets.
Needless to say, I realize how quickly I could have gotten into some trouble, how easily it would be to fall away. But like always my head reminds me how far we are down the road. It didn’t stop the other part from screaming that we were starving! It was a mighty long afternoon.
Lesson learned…. this far down the road and I still need to remind myself to take better care of me, to be prepared, to have a lunch. Ah well…. I am a lifetime work in progress, just turtling along.