How well do you hold yourself accountable?
Be honest! I know I struggle in areas like making my own food instead of ordering out on the weekends. Today, I had a win and I wanted to share.
Ok, I was in weekend mode relaxing and, as I am wont to do, I got hungry. Now, my usual modus operandi is to pull up GrubHub and justify it by saying I worked hard this week and deserve to take it easy. But today, I thought of the plate I made in our nutrition workshop a couple weeks ago.
The exercise in the workshop was to draw an intentional plate to motivate you when hurdles get bigger. Given my goals are integrating cooking more + saving money, and my hurdles are aggrandizing the effort it takes to cook + waiting till I'm hungry to start thinking about what to eat, I drew foods I can make effortlessly and foods that freeze well so I can warm it up easily and quickly. This plate was meant to be an encouragement to reframe what fast food can be, and a checklist of what I need to keep stocked in my cabinets to make it all happen.
In that moment today, I acknowledged that I did work hard and do deserve a break. I also acknowledged everything I've done to set myself up to succeed in this exact moment. I looked at my drawing and decided my fast food today would be a homemade shrimp wrap. Shrimp takes so little effort to cook - it doesn't even have to defrost - and brown rice takes even less effort. Me-of-the-past thought ahead and put a can of black beans in my pantry, and whole wheat wraps & pre-washed leafy greens in the fridge just for this moment. This wrap took about the amount of time my order would have taken with not much more effort. And I made 2 more wraps with the left overs for future-me.
I'm so proud that I held myself accountable for my success. So what if it took 6 months to get here, maybe someone else struggles with accountability too and needed a reminder. Set yourself up while the hurdles are small or non-existent to help you ease through when they seem like mountains. If I can do it, so can you.
Accountability Check