Day 21

Today I turned 31 and hit 21 days of sobriety. 21 days feels really good. It’s calm, relaxed, laid back and wonderful. I’ve developed this patience I never had before. I actually let my almost 3 1/2 year old daughter paint my toenails and finger nails last night. She told me while she was doing it that “I was the coolest mom in our community and she wasn’t even joking”. She dripped polish on the rug, made my fingers and toes look like they were all bleeding and it didn’t even faze me. Prior to my quitting, I wouldn’t even considered this. I love patience!


My heart feels great also. My anxiety is low which stops my palpitations, my arrhythmia hasn’t hit me for a month, and my blood pressure is lower from absence of alcohol. I’m 31 going on 25. One of the things I’d like to work on now is my weight. The first two weeks of sobriety I kept thinking why can’t I just get addicted to exercise or sex or something that would make me look good? My husband would love either counter addiction and my body would be rockin’. But then I caught another annoying news clip of Tiger Woods and I decided that the sex addiction wouldn’t be the healthiest. If I try to create the exercise addiction, I will definitely blog daily about it and you can all join a hysterical journey with me. It will be hilarious, I promise.


I know I’ll be able to stick to it if I journal daily because it works. I’ve got 21 days of sobriety to prove it. For any of my friends addicted to food, let me offer a word of advice. I’ve tried every diet they’ve ever made and the only thing that actually worked for me was food journaling. I was held accountable for everything I ate and when you have to document not only what you ate, but how much and the nutritional value, you think twice the next time you want to eat those comfort foods. Trust me, when you start realizing you take in more than your daily 2000 its eye opening. Also, there are kick ass websites for food journaling that do all the calculations for you. You just search for the food or drink and it automatically tallies up everything you need. It has daily activities as simple as walking to your vehicle in the parking lot to walking a mile. (Do you like my wide range of exercise? Most people would think… walking to your vehicle to running a marathon. Not this whipper snapper.) You can click literally click on ‘took a shower’ and it’ll calculate how many calories you burned. At the end of the day you can see how many more calories you need to burn or even intake (because part of losing weight is actually taking in enough calories also) so you can talk a quick walk or eat if needed.


These websites are amazing tools. I suggest starting out by Googling ‘free daily diet journals’ or ‘free daily diet logs’ and looking at a few. Once you’ve found two you think look good, join both. For the first week, log on both sites not only to see which one is user friendlier, but if they accurate. If one seems a little off, double check it’s stats. Even do some research on consumer reports? I’ve learned not to trust everything I Google or read on the internet. Some people prefer Bing or Yahoo, but I’m a true Googler. I tend to get distracted with Bing beautiful background and Yahoo is advertisement city.


I think I almost just talked myself into dieting again. I shouldn’t say diet. The definition of diet in my book is ‘temporarily losing weight and then gaining back twice as much when you quit’. So technically the definition of diet is ‘Gaining the amount of weight you intend to lose’. OMG! I’ve been at this all wrong. I would like to start eating better so I either maintain my current weight or lose a few inches. I hate to do this because my mother has more than quoted Tim McGraw on her comments; (and my husband despises Tim McGraw) but I keep getting his song stuck in my head ‘My next 30 years’. There’s a verse that says “In my next 30 years, I’m gonna watch my weight, eat a few more salads and not stay up so late; drink a few more lemonades and not so many beers, Lord have mercy on my next 30 years.” True that.


When I’ve gotten the reigns a little tighter on this addiction thing and I’m looking for my next challenge, I will tackle weight loss. I will let you know because a few of my friends who follow this blog have admitted to food addiction. We can do it together! It’ll be fun…ny! We can be extremely honest, share hilarious exercise stories, and I’ll even journal everything I consume in a day including a caloric total on the blog. We would have great support. I’ve even got a cheer leading squad I’d share with you! They are my commentary family…hey guys! It’s just an idea that would be challenging, fun, and I know we could do it together.


My problem while I drank wasn’t food addiction, but more a ‘eat like crap the next day’ problem. If you watch your salt intake, you lose weight, and you crave less salty foods. The same goes for sugar. It’s amazing. When you eat fast food, you crave fast food and you get into this unstoppable cycle. If you eat salads and Subway you crave good foods and veggies. The body is amazing…ly annoying. When I drank alcohol, I craved alcohol. Alcohol is sugar. Now that I don’t drink alcohol, my body still thinks it needs sugar. I’m showing you my new food problem. Sugar. I crave sugar. I crave anything sweet and this is not good. I need to watch it so I don’t counter addict sweets. Why can’t man live on Salted Nut Rolls alone?


I’m feeling great today! I got up at 6:30 this morning; something I haven’t done on ‘the day after my birthday morning’ in years. Day 22 here we come!