Warrior Journey: Breakfast Smoothie

“What are you doing?!”

“What’s your secret?”

“How?! Do tell!”

And various variations of these have peppered my life the last week since I shared my weight, my struggle, and my hopeful journey to $1000 and being a warrior once again.

I think we ended “secrets” when I told you I weigh 321 pounds, guys.

I am bemused that people care what I’m eating and how I’m choosing to chafe. But yes!, I’ll share.

My food requirements

• tastes good
• inexpensive
• easy to make and to buy — I am not driving to the tiny, only open on Mondays TJ’s Herbal Shop in the far north corner of Evanston for Kiwi-Infused Tumbleweed Jackalope Elixir
• easily adapted
• no buying of products I’d never buy in real life, e.g. powders and supplements
• no buying of new kitchen tools
• food that I’ll continue to eat post-contest

I don’t care about variety. That’s been a past pitfall. I’d spend all this time meal-planning, a different thing every meal, every day, because you can’t eat X for dinner six days straight. And all the work and thought variety took had me at McDonald’s on Day Three, which of course meant I was a failure so why even continue which is how I ended up a woman to whom my Rwandan friend Sister Anna, bless her no filter, soul-crushing heart, asked, “Are you pregnant? No? Are you sure? But how did you get this way?!”

One of my Life of Yes℠ tenets is “make it easy.”

If it takes you two trains and a bus to get to your gym, you’re not going to the gym. If it takes you 45 minutes of prep to make a meal, you’re not making that meal. Screw what society, the experts, your Crossfit friends/enemies tell you — find what works for your lifestyle and your palate (both in the food sense and in the everything sense). I could not easily stomach a man who lol’s, has his bed in the corner of his room, or thinks it’s ok that he’s late cause he texted me to tell me he’s late. He doesn’t work for me. He causes me angst. He makes me hate human beings and leaving the house. Thus when I was single, I finally learned to cut the dating fat. Now, I need to learn to cut the food fat.

Here’s one of my breakfast staples, leftover from my warrior days eight years ago, gleaned from The Supermarket Diet —

Fits all the requirements. I’ve had this six of the nine days. No smoothie fatigue.

And while I stand behind my “don’t buy new tools” stance, I must give a nod to the Vitamix. Best Friend bought this a few years ago, much to my “but we already have a blender!” chagrin. Yeah. That blender sucked. Once you go Vitamix, you don’t go back, and you realize you’re not always right.

So that’s some riveting insight into my belly this past week.

I’m down sixteen pounds even though I went to an event with a hot churro bar and an ice cream bar (did not partake) and even though I hosted a Mingler and went to family dinner (where I did partake in brownies, ice cream cake, and more food than I had been consuming). I’ve worked out sixty minutes every day. I’ll share more food selections, along with “tricks” that’ve worked for me and what type of thigh-chafing I’m doing as the journey to warrior continues. If you’d like to get my posts in your inbox, you can subscribe here.

I am so heartwarmed by all the reactions, from friends to strangers, here in Chicago out to California. Thank you for the cheers, the Me too’s, the shares, and niceties in which you’ve hugged me these past nine days. Hearing someone else say they too get suffocated by their boobs during yoga or that they too hate looking at photos or video of themselves (unless properly vetted, with the face angled in a way that the double chin becomes a single chin) or that their closet full of no-fit clothes saddens them in the deepest part of their soul is crazy-uplifting and motivating.

Go Team Go!