Fall has finally arrived here at the Wittekind homestead, and I have to admit that I’m feeling the effects of a fall food rut. I don’t feel like cooking. I don’t feel like eating. In fact, I find myself wishing sometimes that food could be absent from my life altogether. This has been a strange experience for me because normally, I love to cook and bake. It doesn’t matter what eating plan I’m following; I can make all kinds of tasty stuff. This rut has been hitting me hard though, so providing food for myself and my family has been a struggle.
“So what are you doing about it, Sarah?”, you might be asking. Well, my strategy has been twofold. I’ve been looking for inspiration and I’ve been working on planning. Both strategies are important to my success, I think, so here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
On the inspiration front, I’ve been combing through some pretty great websites. If I had only had these great resources when I first started eating low-carb back in 1997, things might have been a bit different. In today’s world of Pinterest, ebooks, blogging, vlogging and the like, there are so many resources at your fingertips now. It’s almost overwhelming, especially when you’d rather not be thinking about food at all.
I’ve also snagged a couple of cookbooks. I don’t normally turn to cookbooks, but my most recent purchase was especially worth it, I think.
The planning front has been a bit more challenging for me. I have no problem making grocery lists and picking foods that my family will eat. The problem creeps in when it comes time to execute the plan. I prefer freshly prepared food as opposed to leftovers, but that means I have to actually prepare said food. It’s purely a mental thing at this point, and I realize that. I think I’m basically at the point where I have to fake it until I make it.
Fortunately, I am a problem solver. If I can identify a problem, I’m happy to do everything I can to change my circumstances rather than sitting around and acting helpless. I thought that briefly sharing my struggle here on my blog might be helpful to other folks who might be facing some of the same challenges.
In my case, I think it boils down to the change I’ve experienced in my relationship with food over the past eight weeks. Following a ketogenic eating plan means that I’ve spent a lot of time not being hungry. This means that food is nothing more than fuel, and so food and I have become more like frenemies. The all or nothing mentality that I must have with non-keto foods can’t be the same mentality that I have with food altogether, and changing that mindset is just going to take time. In the end, I just have to keep reminding myself that what I do matters, and there’s nowhere to go but forward!
Resources:
- All Day I Dream About Food — a fantastic resource by a really neat lady who didn’t allow her diabetes to kill her love of great food
- Linda’s Low Carb Menus & Recipes — a website that I’ve used for recipe inspiration almost as long as it has existed
- The Everyday Ketogenic Kitchen by Carolyn Ketchum — the newest gem that I’ve added to my cookbook collection