I Should Have Known

~*~ WARNING: This post is emotional and a little all over the place. It is what it is. ~*~

We're two days into this challenge and it's been a smashing......FAILURE. I'm talking epic. Completely ridding one's diet of all things processed takes a lot of planning. A lot of planning. Being already behind on life in general, once I started planning out food for our challenge I immediately felt my blood pressure start to rise. I kept thinking I'd find time to do the planning, but who would have guessed that extra hours don't just magically appear on the weekends just because you need them. Pfft.

Each day I'd relax the rules a little bit more and by the time Tuesday morning showed up, the challenge was pretty much out the window. Going from zero to 60, for my family at least, was just too much at one time.

The fact remains, though, that my family is still eating too much processed food. Tonight at dinner, after fighting with the kids one more time about what they'll eat and how many bites and yada yada yada, we excused them to the living room and I broke down. (oh yeah, forgot to mention that I totally timed this challenge to start the exact same day as TOM, stellar planning on my part, wouldn't ya say?)

I am acutely aware that I've created this food struggle in my family. I'm not blind to the fact that my child will tell me whatever it is he thinks I want to hear simply so I won't nag him about nutrition anymore. I'm tuned in to the reality that said child will go back on his word once the food is actually in front of him, I do stop short of actually shoving nutritious food down my child's throat. I know, I'm just not badass enough.

My husband and I talked and we decided to start slow. Breakfast and snack times are easy to fix, so we'll start there. My kids used to be great snackers: cheese, fruit, yogurt, smoothies, etc...lately, though I've been so busy and stressed out that these snacks haven't always found their way into our kitchen and instead I simply throw a bar at them from the front seat of my van as we're driving from Art Class to soccer practice. I'm also usually trying to multitask and organize 50 things at one time while at the grocery store, emailing someone on my phone, texting husband and adding/deleting things on my grocery list while trying to wrestle the iPad from my youngest's hands. It's no wonder some of these less than healthy snacks have been landing in my cart. I can't handle an arguement with the kids on top of all of that, so I simply say yes.

For the next little while, until the kids "detxo" a bit, I'll be grocery shopping alone. Let me say that again. I'll be grocery shopping alone. Did you miss the important part? Alone. Aaahhhhh. I will be removing all junk from the house (or at least hiding it so they don't see it). If it's not here, they can't eat it. When they get hungry, they'll eat what's there.

Now, on to the emotional side of this ~ I have passed my food issues on to my child and I feel that pulling him so hard towards the other way and making this a big deal is simply compounding the problem. I'm the mom and I buy the groceries, so this should be a no brainer, right? One problem ~ I have food issues of my own. My child has learned these behaviors by modeling me. I'm working my ass off to address these issues, but fixing myself and fixing him at the same time is exhausting. Especially when he's not old enough to reasonably understand why things need to change.

In a nutshell, the no processed foods challenge is still on ~ it's just going a slower pace than anticipated. Stick around while we eliminate this junk one bit at a time....