My Unfortunate Healthy Habits Hiatus

On our most recent road trip we ate our way through most of this Costco sized bag of potato chips and completely finished the Costco bag of Skinny Pop Popcorn. And that wasn’t all we ate…

I am just realizing something.

When my daughter is home (because she is an an adult kind of person now, and has a life outside of our home), I often bail on my healthy habits. Not that I always follow through on these anyway. Just that when she is here, I do worse than normal.

For example?

I eat things that I normally don’t eat.

Yesterday, we picked her up at the Reno airport, which is about 70 miles from our house. She graduated from college a week ago and is officially finished with life in Los Angeles, for now at least. So to celebrate her arrival, we ate lunch at the Habit, one of our favorite hamburger places (because they have both spicy tempura green beans and burgers with grilled onions.) I didn’t feel too bad about that. I had my burger lettuce wrapped to cut down on the carbs, and limited myself to only a few string beans. But when we stopped for gas at the 7-11, I got a Big Gulp of Diet Doctor Pepper. And a bag of barbeque potato chips.

I drank soda and ate barbeque chips all the way home.

I justify this by saying that it is necessary to have snacks on a road trip, and even though a 70 mile drive home isn’t much of a road trip, it’s still a little one.

We had Costco microwave popcorn for dinner.

I ate an entire bag by myself.

Also when she is home, I do not want to do any work.

Not even the kinds of work that I generally enjoy or that need to be done.

I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to start organizing her many wonderful belongings that have just moved back into the house. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to work on my book. I don’t want to weed the garden or tend the blackberries. I definitely do not want to worry about cooking any kind of healthy from scratch kind of meal.

I want to sit on the couch with her and my son and watch Netflix.

Maybe it is not a terrible thing to ease up a little on the self-judgment. To give myself a little extra grace. These last few weeks have been momentous in many ways. I am still trying to take it all in. The death of a loved one. Two graduations. My daughter’s newly arrived possessions that need to be resettled into our home and that are currently taking up space on the floor and kitchen table and bathroom counter and on most other flat surfaces in the house.

Through all of this, the dishes need to be washed, the laundry needs to be put away, the weeds keep growing.

Diet soda and Netflix rom-coms are not going to solve any of my problems. They will not heal anything. But maybe they are not so terrible for me, as long as they are occasional and do not become new habits.

So I think I’ll head out now for a little walk. Walks are great perspective bringers (and a daily walk is a healthy habit for sure). It also will help the chips and popcorn settle in my stomach. With any luck, the perspective it brings will enable me to steer clear of the ice cream in the freezer once I get home.