Start Again Start Again Start Again

I'm thinking of trying blogging again. I'd like to start writing more and getting my writings out into the ethers. I'm planning to start a 100-day challenge. Challenges always seem like good ways to institute whatever it is you'd like to change about your self or life. Undo unhelpful habits and make beneficial habits. Readings in the past seem to indicate that it takes about 30 days to break a habit and then another 30 days to form a new replacement habit. So, that would make about 60 days. So, just imagine doing something for 100 days. If you can stick with it, I would expect some definite changes in your self and life, depending of course on what it is you are planning to do for 100 days. 

For the next 100 days, starting tomorrow, I am planning to eat mostly whole plant-based foods and I am planning to journal every day. I plan to hand-write at least 3 pages in one of my many hardbound journals that are just waiting to be used. I also plan to spend time writing on the computer based on readings and prompts from The Book of Alchemy, by Suleika Jaouad. I am actually already six days into daily hand-written journaling and prompted writing. So, I should be good to keep going tomorrow. 

So, what to do about this blog. What should be the purpose of this blog. What is the goal of starting this blog. Perhaps just putting out there some of my thoughts as I go through the next 100 days. Eating plant-based is not new and the next 100 days will not be new with respect to plant-based eating. But, I tend to be a bit of a binge eater, most of my life. I tend to binge eat on foods that are not foods beneficial for health. They tend to be comfort foods that I will binge on. Although, it is also possible for me to binge eat foods that are considered somewhat healthy but then in large amounts, well, more is not better. Like peanut butter. I typically only eat the dry roasted nothing else added organic peanut butter, but I can eat a cup of it in one sitting with two apples. A cup of peanut butter is a lot of peanut peanut butter. And, I may be underestimating... When I'm binge eating peanut butter, it's probably closer to 1.5 to 2 cups of peanut butter. When I eat that much peanut butter, even if everything else I ate that day was reasonable, I will gain weight. 

I also find myself mostly, when I am doing my best to follow a vegan lifestyle, binging on more highly processed foods like pita chips, non-dairy/vegan dairy-free ice creams, beyond burgers smothered with ketchup and mustard and vegan rolls with a large side of sweet potato fries further smothered with a mix of ketchup and mustard... and, cherry coke if I can find it. Although, I'm not really sure that cherry coke can be considered vegan. It's debatable. I suppose it depends on the source of the sugar in the cherry coke. If it's corn syrup, then probably vegan. If it's regular sugar then, maybe not...  It has been indicated in some writings that regular sugar is filtered to get its whiteness through filters made with animal bones. While sugar is not an animal product per se, I have known some vegans that will not eat regular sugar. Beyond that, well, Coke is a potentially unethical company. It's marketing strategies in the U.S. and other countries are questionable. Not that they're the worse, by all means, probably not. 

So, in the next 100 days, I hope that I can also work on curbing the binge eating that I have a tendency to do. I'm going to try and dig into the emotions that are behind the binge eating. I have the audiobook, The Love-Powered Diet, by Victoria Moran, and I hope to work through that over these next 100 days. I have also signed up for Victoria's Main Street Vegan Academy (MSVA). I'm hoping that will be an amazing experience and perhaps I'll use this space to talk about some of my experiences doing that. There's a lot of homework to do. Movies to watch, Books to read. I've already done quite a bit over previous months. But, I think I'm going to re-read and re-watch and then blog about it. Some of the movies I've already watched are really good and I've already watched them multiple times. But, I think in wanting to document the full experience, I'm going to watch/read again and blog. It will be interesting to see what unfolds. One hundred days is a fairly long time, perhaps short over a lifespan, but long enough for lots to happen. So much happens in life that just goes by like a dandelion seed on the wind.