Restaurant-Free Challenge: Complete

Yep.  Thus endeth my two-week foray into a restaurant-less world.

I had one minor transgression – a few bites of (freakin’ incredible) bread pudding at work yesterday – but otherwise, I was totally clean.  Much to my own surprise.

I’m not kidding.  I really thought Thai food would haunt my dreams.  I thought the free / cheap food I have access to at work would be nearly impossible to resist.  I never would have guessed it, but… this really wasn’t super hard.  After a few days of eating well, cooking for myself, and bringing dinner to work instead of waiting until I was so hungry that I HAD to eat there, the cravings that used to overwhelm me so often simply subsided.  Suddenly, I was content with whatever half-ass meal I’d made for myself.  Why, a peanut butter and banana sandwich, you say?  Sounds amazing!  The same turkey burger I’ve made four days in a row?  Absolutely!

(Okay.  That’s a slight exaggeration.  Obviously I did some mildly interesting cooking, and learned how to work with the basics a bit better to add some excitement to my go-to meals.  But it’s not like I was whipping up feasts on a daily basis.)

In any case, I stuck it out.

Maybe it worked because I had the blog to keep me accountable.  Maybe I’m just in the right mindset now.  Or maybe I’m just so damn stubborn that it was almost fun to be the obnoxious one responding to dinner invitations with, “I’ll sit with you, but I already ate.” 

Doesn’t matter.  Now, I finally have to admit it – contrary to everything my inner-fat kid tells me, eating better really does make you feel better.  Less sluggish.  More alert.  Less cranky.  Yadda yadda.  Fine.

Not to mention the fact that I dropped five pounds in what felt like ten seconds and probably spent way less money than I would have otherwise.

Sidenote: my last official dinner of this self-imposed challenge was actually NOT half-assed!  Not difficult, really, but not a peanut butter sandwich…

Boy, do I take an awful picture.

Voila.  Lightened up chicken parm with whole wheat spaghetti – or, as I used to refer to it as a child, “sticky-up noodles.”

Mmmmmm… sticky-up noodles….

So, of course, I can’t keep this restaurant-less business up forever… nor would I want to, because

a)     I love food too much, and

b)    I would really start to annoy the crap out of my friends

That said, it’s definitely good to know that I don’t, in fact, need to hit up Grubhub.com every other day to be satisfied.

Curry Thai will be devastated, of course.  But such is life.