Biggie Big

 Last week I did a BIG THING. Two big things, actually, but they are related so it's actually a two in one thing. Up until now, I've been starting slow, doing small, baby step things aimed more at establishing habits and gently easing myself in. But last week, I decided to tackle one (actually two) of the more challenging things on the list. 

Last week, I started at  21 Day Cleanse (thing # 8) including Eliminating Caffeine (thing #9). It's not one of those juice cleanses or shake diets or the cabbage-soup-explosive-diarrhea-diet. No- its more of an elimination diet where you gradually cut out things from your diet over the course of 21 day. So of course,  first off is processed foods, sugar and caffeine. I have been wanting to address my horrible caffeine habit for quite some time now. I have attempted to do so in the past, but always with no success. I just seemed to have too much going on- long work hours, family commitments, training for some event or another, and the need to power through the fatigue. This time, I decided that eliminating the things from my diet would take first priority. And it made all the difference. 

I had been dreading days of horrible withdrawal headaches. In reality, I only had a headache on the first day. It was a horrible, horrible headache and I ended up just going to bed at 7:30 so deal with it, but after that, I was done with headaches. Yay! I was not done with fatigue. I truthfully have been absolutely exhausted this entire week. But, I've been pretty exhausted for months anyway- hence the increase in the caffeine. I figure maybe I just need to let myself be tired for a while in order to get all the crap out of my system so I can finally feel better. And today, I'm actually feeling not quite as tired. 

Of course, this also means that I had to put another goal on the back burner for a while. The 5K Training (thing #4) will just have to wait another week or two. Just until I can tolerate more vigorous exercise. In the meantime, I'm doing pretty well ( I did have a little slip up Saturday when I was at my Dad's house, hunkering down for the blizzard. He bought some M&Ms and I had a few while we watched college basketball. I could have resisted. I just wanted to have some M's with my Dad. Got right back on track the next day, though. Which is a victory! 

So high priority on BIG THINGS for the next two weeks. I'm feeling pretty good about it.