Three years ago today I did what I never thought I could do… I lost 100 freakin’ pounds! I even managed to keep it all off and then some for over 2 years. Unfortuately, now instead of being able to say, “I’ve lost 100+ freakin’ pounds!” I can only say, “I once lost 100+ freakin’ pounds”.

When I first started on my journey I followed Weight Watchers (for the millionth time). I knew how to read a label, but I only had to really pay attention to the fiber because the higher the fiber the lower the points. Their Points Plus program essentially gave you carte blanche to eat whatever you wanted. If you wanted the cookie, you could have the damn cookie, you just needed to make sure you stayed within your daily points allowance (but let’s not forget those glorious Flex Points!).

When I decided I wanted to truly learn how to eat to live rather than live to eat, I switched to counting calories and using MyFitnessPal. I learned how to “eat this, not that” and I saw my success continue.

When I wanted to try the whole clean eating approach, I had a food allergy test done and eliminated gluten, dairy, soy and processed sugars because the results told me that’s where almost all of my inflammation was coming from. I bought grass fed and organic and hemp hearts and chia seeds and watched the pounds and inflammation go down (and the grocery bills go up).

And that brings us to now… I feel like I’m just grasping at straws trying to pick and stick with something.

I have an infuriating mentality that everything has to be all or nothing. If I can’t completely do something the way I think I should, then I just won’t do it at all… because that’s better and makes total sense right? I know, it’s a warped way of thinking that I just need to get over but am stuck on. I need to get it into my head that doing just half, or even a quarter of the clean eating I was doing before combined with a little bit of convenience (and price… ie who knows what they’re eating for 1.99/lb vs grass fed amazingness for 5.99/lb) is OK… because the bottom line is doing nothing is never gonna get me back to saying, “I lost over 100 freakin’ pounds!” again.