BREAKFAST KALE: I love kale. But this isn’t a kale post – it’s a NO FOOD GUILT post.

Nutrition-wise, yesterday Wednesday, April 29th sucked for me.

I worked an eight-hour hospital night shift the night before, (11p to 7:30 a.m.), didn’t take any food from home with me (no meal prep), and had to go straight from hospital to Amazon on Wednesday morning – now pretty hungry.

So what happened? Dunkin Donuts happened.

A meatless sausage sandwich (WITH dairy cheese – yup I chose it); 12 chocolate donut holes (6 for breakfast; 6 for break later), and an orange juice.
NOT my usuals. Forced (well I didn’t have to force the cheese 😜) because:

• I didn’t meal prep – I ate a good meal before I left home and didn’t take the time to think about how hungry I might be the next morning.
• I was sleepy – I was thinking only about whether I could physically get thru my hours at Amazon before my body got too tired. I forgot to remember that the more tired I am, the more hungry I am.

Being extra sleepy, not only makes me extra hungry, but also extra undisciplined.

At that point, I no longer cared.

GOOD NUTRITION MEANS MEAL PREP

Meal-prepping doesn’t mean donning a chef’s hat and spending hours in the kitchen. In its simplest terms, it just means giving some thought and action to what your next meal will be.

Planning not only eliminates those “what’s for dinner?” moments, it also means that you won’t have to experience my hunger+sleepy+no prepped food mania.

A peanut butter sandwich, container of applesauce, bananas, and a bag of honey-flavored pistachios – all foods I had in my pantry at the time – would have kept me away from an unplanned Dunkin Donuts visit.

I wouldn’t have gotten to FINALLY taste DD’s meatless sausage sandwich, but that’s besides the point. 😊

TODAY’S A NEW DAY!

I don’t believe in “cheat days,” and I don’t believe in guilt.

I ate foods I don’t normally eat that day. I can’t even remember the last time I had a donut, and I only allow myself processed meatless sausages or burgers about once a month, if that.

But I don’t feel guilty. That sandwich and donuts were delicious! And now I know for sure what my boundaries are.

I definitely can’t handle staying up all night and then going straight to a 10-hour Amazon shift the next morning without good nutrition to keep my energy going.

(I’ll discuss my foolishness in scheduling back-to-back shifts with no sleep in between in another post. 🙄 Sometimes I forget I’m 58 year old.)

I also know for sure that I absolutely MUST prepare for later hunger -regardless of how full I feel from my present meal.

Beating ourselves up and then giving in to mistakes sets the tone for failure in goal achievement throughout our lives, whether that goal is weight loss or getting that promotion.

We’re all human and we’re going to have setbacks as we move forward on our life journeys.

The trick is walk away from that mistake with a lesson learned, and a plan to prevent it from happening again.

Here’s to our health!