Our Triumphs are all the sweeter for the depth of the challenges we overcome.

Hi again everyone!  I am coming up for air.  It's now been a full week since I decided to change my life and overcome addition!  Firstly, I actually lost 2.6 kgs!!  That's cool!  I feel much lighter and far less bloated!  I know for sure that if I hadn't taken up this challenge last Monday, those scales would have said the opposite! I am so thankful that I am now on the right road, even though it's been all uphill, actually, up a mountain this week!!!  Getting the flu on Wed was my first major road block to deal with!  On one hand you think, well, I could just leave it another week, eat whatever I like and just concentrate on that fact I'm sick.  But my mind set was so determined on doing this right, no matter what, right from the beginning, that I knew if I could just get through the week and stick to only eating super healthy clean, fresh, natural foods, it would make the world of difference!  And it has!  Today I felt my energy and vitality and mood lifting dramatically.  During my flu I didn't have an appetite much anyway, due to just sleeping 18 hours a day!!  But today I ate lots and lots all day, all healthy and wholesome and felt the food healing me and giving me real energy without the highs and lows of my usual diet!  Amazing!  I was able to do some housework again, cook, and read with a clear head.  Now the horrible symptoms of the flu are leaving, and the body is almost through it's detox I can feel the healing power of my own body working!!  It's doing what it's meant to do!  My appetite scared me a bit today though.  Even though I know I have to eat when I'm hungry and that it's Ok to eat good food when you're hungry, I'm still afraid of binge eating and not overdoing it. 
Any foods that are now in the house that I start eating and then think I'm abusing, overeating or starting to binge on, I immediately throw out.  The food that is most likely now to cause a binge is bread.  Even my special gluten free bread is dangerous at the moment.  I want to eliminate all grains for the next 2 weeks and see how I feel.  I want to experiment in these early stages of this plan to see how I cope with things like, no grains, and next I want to try to work on cutting down my meals to 3 a day.  I've worked out, that for me, if I eat 5 or 6 times a day, I end up eating too much 'snack' type foods and then when its meal time, I'm not hungry enough to eat a good quality vegetable and protein meal.  Eating with my family at night is very important too.  So I want to train my body to wait until 6.30pm to eat a meal at night.  I have a problem with eating while I'm cooking, or just before I start to cook - (I'm impatient and it's become a habit I have to break.) so that when it comes to eating the actual meal, I've already snacked on too much to enjoy the real meal!! 
So that's what's been going on this week. I've kept up with writing in my food journal, which has been an excellent tool to look back over and assess.  I've had lots of time to contemplate my diet and food habits.  Lots of time to plan new strategies and lots of time to let my body heal.  I'm glad I lost 2.6 kilos, but I'm not expecting that to happen this week!  Just .5 of a kilo would be good!  I'll just let the week roll by one day at a time!!