One not-so-obvious reason why I love these nutrition challenges is that you really get to know yourself in a more focused way. Life happens so fast and we are so busy from day to day that we really don’t take adequate time to do any mindful self-reflections. During a challenge, we are constantly being present with our actions and checking in with ourselves and our goals. I find that I learn something new about myself every time I do a challenge. I will share below!

The first time I ever did a 30 day challenge I simply realized that I am a lot stronger than I thought in that I can say “no” to temptation and have the ability to stick to my goal of eating clean. It was a really cool, empowering feeling. I also realized I loved the walls or “rules” that a challenge provided me. It made me feel good to take away my option to eat junk and therefore it made it easy when faced with a decision “to eat or not to eat.” I knew I couldn’t so it was an easy “no thank you” answer. I liked that. No mind games, no wavering back and forth, no justification, no nonsense. I responded well to that.

This time around I learned that I’m a “situational” eater. I don’t really eat emotionally or have late night snacking temptations or anything like that, but I let my guard down quickly when faced with certain situations that throw off my routine. My weakness to make poor food choices is exposed when my schedule is thrown off or things out of the ordinary cause me to feel like my routine is lost. This week when all this snow hit and my work schedule was off it was really apparent to me. If I wasn’t on this challenge I would have used that as an excuse to eat a lot of bad foods! I was really able to make a link between these series of events and realized I’m definitely best when on a routine schedule. I didn’t give in, but boy, I wanted to.

This was a great “ah-ha” moment for me because now I can really identify potentially hazardous situations and help avoid them in the future if I’m prepared to handle them and know that of myself. I’m stronger now because of it.

What have you learned about yourself? How have you adapted because of it? Will you use this new knowledge once the walls of the challenge are over? Part of this challenge, is sharing, so I’d love to hear from you all about what you have learned over the course of the challenge so far in the comment section below.