The Final Countdown: My Fourth Week

Alright ya'll...

So this week I cheated, but in my defense it was Christmas and they had cooked a huge ham. Who am I to say no to that? Prententious. That's what. So I ate the meat and I opened my presents and I went to bed feeling great. Suprisingly, I had no guilt really. I thought to myself: it was a couple slices of ham, the world isn't going to end tomorrow. But then remembered that it's that exact attitude that has gotten us to where we are now, and then I felt a shred of regret.

Other than that I was on the straight and narrow! Even when I crashed my car, I resisted the urge to stuff my face with fried chicken to cope with the emotional trauma and instead channeled that energy into spicy hummus and pita chips (which is now my go-to crisis snack). I felt proud of myself, not only for surviving smashing my car into a tree but for sticking to my diet even when life got tough. This made me think more about the behavioral aspects of habit building, and what exactly it is psychologically that makes you want to stick with something.

So read up on an article. It's titled "6 Factors That Influence Our Behavior" by Colin Roberston, and it was speaking about different things that keep people going through with their goals. One that really resonated with me was will power and structuring. I personally feel that those are the two most important things a person must posses/do in order to be successful in relatively everything. It's something I've stuck by during this process, motivating myself mentally and keeping a strict, consistent schedule in order to be successful. I think it's also a lot easier to follow through with something once you stop considering what you're doing as an "alternative lifestyle" and instead normalize it! If it was considered just a part of daily life, then it would be a lot easier to stick with your goal.

When the question of "what comes next?" is brought up, my response is: I have no clue. I'm not sure if I'll continue being pescatarian, though the things I've learned about the diet and myself will forsure stick with me forever. It's made me more concious of not only what I eat, but my overall environmental impact in terms of water and food waste, electrical use and a lot more. I think that being aware is the first step in completely and totally changing your lifestyle. I will take aspects of this project with me, like not eating a lot of beef, and incoperating more locally grown produce in my diet. Overall, it's been real. I wouldn't change a thing about how I went about this, because I think that I truly did do my best. Maybe I'll look into other dietary options that are sustainable but also make me feel like I'm not giving up too much, that way I'm happy AND environmentally #woke.