14 Day Challenge

Side note: I keep taking pictures of the yummy food I'm eating, but I always forget to upload them when I get home. Don't worry, I will have a big foodie post soon with all the pictures of what I'm eating, I promise!

Last week I decided that I wanted to challenge myself to 14 days without eating out. There are several reasons WHY I want to do this, including (but not limited to)

I want to see:

1. How easy or hard this is. Specifically when I give into eating out, why do I do it?
2. How much money I will save
3. How much weight (if any) I will lose
4. If I really enjoy it, will I continue to do this?

So I chose 14 days because that is a pay cycle for me and I feel like this would be MUCH easier to track and do if I am doing it for an entire paycheck.

The rules are: NO restaurants, fast food or even pre-made food convenience foods at the grocery store. This includes salad bars, premade sandwiches and rotisserie chickens too! Everything I eat will come from my kitchen. Things this doesn't include is stuff like hummus, deli meat, etc. Do you understand the difference? I need to outlaw eating out for convenience sake and take the time to make meals at home. Clearly not making my own hummus isn't hurting me (I enoy both homemade and premade thank you!). Also included in this is not going out to bars for drinks. That shouldn't be too hard though!

side note: I don't eat out THAT much anymore. But the other night I got home late from meeting my little sister (big brothers big sisters) and I had a fridge full of food and I found myself questioning where I could stop for a quick bite on the way home and actually told myself it would be okay to eat a hamburger and fries. UM NO it's not okay and luckily I realized this and went home and made myself a sandwich. I want to train my brain to remember that I can pull together healthy and quick meals at home that are cheaper and much better for me than hitting fast food, even if I'm buying a grilled chicken sandwich or subway sandwich. At home = healthier. This is my strive.

I know that I can do this, I just need to pick a time where I KNOW I won't be going out to eat at all for any special occasion. Here's where I run into a predicament. The next two week period starts next Thursday. My best friend's birthday is in that two week period. I had already checked with her to see what we were doing, telling her of my goal but saying that if we were going out to eat that I would do it at another time. She has no idea what we're doing. Great....

My plan was then the two weeks starting after that, on October 8th. I got a calendar invitation this morning for a work lunch on October 9th for my boss' birthday. The two weeks after that my family will be in town so eating out is almost inevitable if I want to see them. The two weeks after that I'm going to Boston to visit family and friends.

Sigh.

Clearly, it doesn't seem like I can do two weeks without running into some "special circumstance." This really makes me mad! How do we live in a society that I can't make a promise to myself to eat only foods that I've made for 14 days? 14 days is not a long time! Eating out is so ingrained into our society that we can't possibly have a celebration or visit with people without going out to eat!!! I'm very upset about this.

My question now is this.. should I still commit to 2 weeks and tell myself the ONLY time that I'll eat out is for a certain celebration? Or should I just hold off and wait until I have a pure 2 week period? Possibly November, but who knows if something else will come up by then. Unfortunately I won't really be able to obtain pure results from this experiment if I still eat out one day, but at least it's better than what I do now? What do you guys think?