Interested vs. Committed

A year ago today, I'd convinced myself I was eating near-zero processed food.

When this popped up in my memories just now, I LOLd.

Because I remember what my pantry looked like a year ago.

And what my fridge looked like.

Lots of healthy food, like in the pictures there, yes.

But also:

Cliff Bars, Luna Bars, Kind Bars, etc

Dark Chocolate w/sugar (it's totally good for you wink-wink, nod-nod).

Granola (lots!)

Ice Cream (occasionally, but still there)

Cereal (occasionally, but still there)

Fruit juice

Etc, etc - lots of stuff with an ingredient list.

And there's no telling how often I ate out that year, but it was a lot - and not always good.

I told myself I was committed to eating clean.

But I wasn't.

I was interested.

I was dabbling in it.

Last week, I wrote about the difference between 95% whole, natural foods and near-100%.

But how could I have been nearly free of processed food for the first time a year ago and also a week ago?

The answer lies in human nature, and from these two stories, I can make the following observations:

1 - We will tell ourselves lies about what we're doing!

"Yes, I exercise every day," we tell ourselves when it's been four days since we hit the gym or went for a run.

"I eat healthy most of the time," when we had three cheeseburgers, a six-pack of beer, and two pints of ice cream over the weekend.

"'I'm working hard on this project," when we haven't so much as looked at it in two weeks.

2 - There is always room to improve and get better

Despite my thinking last year that my nutrition was excellent, it was not.

Pretty good?

Yes.

But not excellent.

When I was interested, I was eating pretty good, but I had no idea about

With Julia's help, I'm going to great lengths to achieve excellence. A year ago, for example, I had my cholesterol tested at my doctor's office - the standard fasting lipid test.

But there's more to it than just that number.

The size of cholesterol particles matters—in a big way—so now I'm having that and a million other blood, urine, and saliva tests performed in her clinic.

(I'll post more about that in the coming weeks).

Being interested was getting me pretty good results.

But being committed is what got me to the point of being able to say last week that I feel better than I've ever felt in my life.

And it's why I know that there's still room for improvement.

I'm on the journey.

But I'm nowhere near the end.