BLC 26 - Pushing out of my Comfort Zone

I wasn't even considering doing the pushing out of our comfort zone part of the challenge this week, but then I read Lady Carol's blog and was intrigued. Thanksgiving has always been a big deal. The Redel family always has a big family reunion each year. We can have anywhere from 20 to 60 people in any given year so it's a lot of fun. There's a core group who prepare the same items each year so we have a lot of standard Thanksgiving worthy menu items.

This year, though, we're in MN with the kids. Our granson is now 19 months old so this is the 1st Thanksgiving he'll be truly a part of things. So it's up to me to do the dinner which I'm thrilled about. My DIL is from China so every new American holiday is a huge deal to her and she is so appreciative it's a joy to do. I've been working on how to downsize our Redel Thanksgiving to fit the 5 of us, but now there's a twist.

What if I push out of my high calorie comfort zone and do healthy? Well, that wasn't going to happen, but what if? Lady Carol started me a pondering. My normal MO is to drastically diet the week before so I could 'enjoy' those 4 days of family, friends, black Friday leftovers and breakfasts of pumpkin pie (just to make more room in the fridge, of course).

So the healthy seed was planted and I had points to earn so I thought, why not at least think about it? Before I knew it, I was having fun! I started looking for healthy alternatives. I started thinking out of the box. I started having fun! Could this be? Planning a healthy, guilt free Thanksgiving could be fun? Well, that's what did.

I've been doing IE (intuitive eating) for awhile now and one big landmark I've hit is that I hate the feeling of being FULL. And that's what those 4 days are usually about. But suddenly, I realized that making the traditional Thanksgiving would do just that! My family is all on board. My DIL eats healthy naturally, my son hates leftovers, my DH is trying to take off pounds and the kidlet will eat anything he can get in his mouth! So the recipe search is on. The biggest lesson I've learned is that pushing out of my comfort zone can be fun, even if the thought of it is a little scary.