The number one resolution at the beginning of each year: Eat better. I’ve never technically set a New Year’s resolution around food, but if you know my story with food struggles along with my goal-oriented mind, food has centered more than a handful of my goals. It’s like when I gave up peanut butter for Lent because that would for sure bring me closer to Jesus and had nothing to do with manipulating a sacred season to cut a single processed food I consumed daily out of my life for 46 days.

Food has been such the evolving journey in my life. It started as a search for low-calorie foods because I felt fat, but that only created different issues without curing the ones I already carried. Then connections began being made in my mind about ingredients versus nutrition facts, & food started making sense. It was still hard though because there were a lot of options. Eat meat. Only eat vegetables. Whole wheat is okay. Gluten is the devil. Skim vs. whole milk. Avoid cheese. So I tried different challenges. No meat. No dairy. Paleo. Strict portion control. Juice cleansing. I’m a sucker for a good challenge—it gives direction & purpose & leaves me feeling like I’m in a constant state of improvement. The issue is that I can’t seem to do a challenge for the sake of the challenge—I always want results. So when Blake & I did a 21-day challenge together this past August involving both food and exercise & he lost 11 pounds while I lost a whopping ZERO, I decided not to do challenges with Blake anymore. Because then, not only was I competing with myself but with him, & I lost to both. This isn’t actually true because I was doing good things for my body, but if we have the wrong motive behind the action, the good can go undetected.

I was so close to starting a new challenge this month— but then I decided to try a different approach.

Balance.

Let’s see how that goes.

Because when I eat like crap, I feel like it. But when I put a boatload of pressure on myself to eat the perfect diet, I still end up feeling like crap because I ate pizza at small group or ate chicken nuggets with my daughter or ate ice cream with Blake. It doesn’t matter how much good I do– a single mess up feels catastrophic. That’s a bunch of silly. I want to fuel my body well & teach my kid to do the same, but this competition to be perfect with the title FAILURE when we’re not is the farthest thing I want for Collins or myself. This goes for food & everything else. So take that resolution, 2016.

I’m currently in the middle of a PBS documentary, In Defense of Food, with Michael Pollen. It’s based on his book (which I haven’t read) & is SO interesting. I highly recommend it if you care about my opinion at all, which I’m hoping you do since you’re reading my blog (Hi, mom & dad!).

Collins & I made a new recipe today, & I’m so pumped about it. She hates avocado—like really hates it.

So this cherry chocolate avocado pudding could be a breakthrough (from Detoxinista). Avocados have so much to offer nutritionally, but you can’t taste it one bit in this recipe. Team Avocado!

The only thing I changed was substituting frozen raspberries for the cherries because it’s what I had on hand– still worked. I meant to take more pictures, but we’re trying out this idea of Collins being my “little helper,” & it basically means I have a full-time taste tester.

1 ripe avocado

¾ C frozen cherries

2 T cocoa powder

3 T almond milk

3-4 pitted Medjool dates

splash of vanilla

sprinkle of salt

Give all ingredients a whirl in your food processor, scraping the sides occasionally. Dig in, or chill for later. Yum!