How long?

I am not challenged by Thanksgiving. My husband is British so he doesn't care about the day and has no childhood traditions to pursue, and my family lives 1700 miles away. To me, it's just another thursday. It will be day 45 of my Whole30! Um...yeah, that works.

I don't know how long I'm hanging on to this, really. It's just the way I eat now and I'm really not planning for a day when this "stops". I see no reason to stop. I see no good reason to stop eating fresh, healthy foods that make me feel good. When I am offered something that isn't as fresh/healthy/Whole30 approved, I ask myself if it's "worth feeling bad for". I never realized I was feeling bad, not until I started feeling so much better. I didn't know it was possible to feel good like this. The only thing I changed was what I was eating, so I know it's because of the food. I see no reason to eat something that has the potential to make me feel bad--tired, loggy, heavy, lethargic. There's the possibility of one or two handmade chocolates at the New Year, but that's if we go to the redwoods for my rebirthday. Otherwise, this is...the way I eat. It's a fundamental shift in thinking. I finally understand everything I've always read about not going on a "diet" but rather "changing to way you eat". I thought I had. I thought I was. Now I realize I was so firmly entrenched in "dieting" that even I couldn't see it. Planning cheat days, allowing days where I "went off plan". Even just having a plan to go off of, honestly. Eating too many Points and trying to compensate, hoarding Points through the week so I could eat what I "really" wanted. Doing all the math, obsessively, throughout my day: "if I have chips with lunch then I've got too many carbs so if I drop out the rice at dinner and leave off some of the meat to drop fat but what about protein okay change my meat with dinner to something less fatty means I've got to have at least 6 ounces how are calories doing...?" It was all exhausting. And NEVER WORKED. Long term, anyway. Everything works for a little bit of time. It's finding the thing you can do long term that makes the difference. And I can eat real food long term.