Half Way Point and Focus Group Food Fest

Today I woke up before my alarm, I am going to call that an unintended side effect of this process.  This rarely happens as I am not a morning person and I love my sleep.  Beating the alarm and not hitting the snooze button several times are foreign concepts for me but I felt really energized this morning and got right out of bed. There may be something to this whole you are what you eat thing.

A lot of the Whole30 is learning about yourself and breaking addictions and associations with food.  My skin and sleep are starting to reap the benefits of all this real food but I also want to learn things from this process.

I am spending day 15 and 16 at focus groups in Westchester, NY.  This is a great opportunity for willpower and learning as I associate focus groups with mindless eating.  Let me set the stage for you.  When you arrive at focus groups in the AM, you are greeted with a bountiful breakfast of muffins and bagels. You are in a dark room behind a mirror for the majority of the day and you are surrounded by and abundance of candy and salty snacks.  Usually lunch and dinner are ordered from local restaurants so you have the opportunity to customize your eating.  In the afternoon in case you haven't eaten your weight in snacks, the facility puts out a cheese plate, fresh baked cookies and additional snacks.  Focus groups are literally an opportunity to sit in the dark and eat all day long, I have left many a research day feeling ill, and I am looking forward to hopefully feeling fantastic when I leave today after consuming real food.

Knowing that I would be faced with challenges and temptations I went in with a game plan.  Since last night was the prep night, I had a lot of delicious food options to pack for the day.  I packed breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack as backups just in case the food at the facility didn't work out.  Having this safety net of Tupperware packed goodness makes me feel calm as the day goes on.  I also ordered a Venti Tazo Passion tea, one of my go to treats to drink in between breakfast and lunch to avoid the snacks and drinks I am not consuming.

I feel a lot of success and pride that I have made it 50% of the way to 30 days. I am feeling amazing and despite the Snickers bar staring at me across the focus group room, I will continuing to take this process one meal at a time.