Struggle #4: The Lake House

So this weekend I put a few more miles on my car and made the treck to Neoga, IL to my family's lake house. It was my dad's birthday weekend so we had to celebrate accordingly of course, which meant alcohol, peach polka dot pie, Special K treats, and a lot of other food that I am not supposed to eat anymore.  Let me tell you this was a VERY challenging weekend for me... Since I have started eating healthy,  I have purposely put myself in situations where I do not have tempting food right in front of me.  However, the way that we usually eat at the lake house involves a lot of snacky food loaded with carbs, gluten, and sugar.

I would love to tell you that I managed to eat well still and avoid all of the temptations sitting in front of me, but that was not the case... I did have a small sliver of pie, a small Special K treat, and a s'more this weekend, along with a cider and vodka shot (that was forced upon me for loosing a game but still.. bad Taylor!).  Honestly this was a huge step up from what I would normally eat at the lake, which usually includes a ton of deserts and chips but those foods are not supposed to be included in my life anymore.

While I was eating the delicious sugar that was in all of my treats I was blissful, however, driving by yourself for three and a half hours gets you thinking why did I eat those things?  I have been working so hard to be diligent with my diet; reading labels on the back of everything I buy, analyzing the sugar content in everything, making sure I get enough protein and vegetables.  Why did I let myself down and indulge in these treats?

I tried to tell myself that it's not a big deal and you are allowed to have some cheats every once in awhile. I also said to myself I did not want to make my mom feel bad because she made all of these deserts and made myself feel bad because everyone else was eating these things so why can't I? It made me stop and think, if I tell myself that it is ok to cheat every once in awhile, that those words are going to come out of my mouth way too often.  These thoughts are all just excuses that if I keep allowing myself to think are going to become an easy way out and all of this hard work will be for nothing.

Excuses are easy to come by, with the help of them I let myself slip up four times in one day!  I know that with this diet, I am not going to be perfect and that it is ok to treat yourself every once in awhile. However, four times in a day is unacceptable.  I have to stop myself from thinking these excuses make eating poorly acceptable. If I want to reach my goals in CrossFit it is going to take a lot of hard work, dedication, and diligence.  Eating that poorly in one day is not going to help me out at all.  Because of all of this bad food, I am going to forego my ice cream this week because I do not deserve it.  Trust me this will be punishment enough for me and be reinforcement not to slip up like this again.

Even though I had this heart-to-heart with myself on the car ride home, I still had a wonderful weekend and I am so happy I made the trip to hang out with my family and friends.  I managed to get an open water swim in yesterday with the motley crew below.

It is so peaceful in the open water in the morning, I absolutely love it!  Just you (and the other goons around you) out to swim.  We also water skied our butts off and wrestled on our giant mat that floats in the water for hours.

All of us chilling on the mat after a wrestling match.  Fun fact: this mat was ranked as one of the "10 most useless water toys rich people buy" but let me tell you this mat is amazing and has created hours of fun.  I am sure my parents wish that they would have had this for us years ago!  Also our lake house is definitely not for the rich people.  My mom always tells everyone to "lower your standards" before you come, but it is enough for us to have a place to cook food, sleep in, and then play in the water all day.  To show you just how redneck we like to get on Lake Mattoon, I give you...

A chair in the bonfire pit!  

The house we have came with the furniture that was in it before... This chair happened to have a few springs poking out of the seat cushion and the leg rest wouldn't go down so the logical thing to do is to burn it.  At least this is how the boys in my family think.  Makes for a good show anyways!

Whew.  Long post but quite a lot of thinking happening today and after all my diet thoughts I had to add a little flavor to it!  And, I did make it home in time to watch the final games event.  I know, I am a CrossFitter so I will write my thoughts about that later!