If I were to start this challenge over again I might do it a little differently. I might devote the whole three weeks to just movement, then spend another three weeks on food.

There’s so much to explore in both and to throw down the gauntlet on all of it can be overwhelming.

But I’m in the middle – past the middle – so I shall persevere.

Formulas don’t work the way they used to. Eat this, not that, lose weight. Add in a healthy dose of  exercise and watch the clothes start to fall off. Sleep better, wake up energized.

I have been at this for two weeks now and while I have gained a ton of energy I have not lost one pound. And I am frustrated.

This tells me two things, or maybe three:

1. I care more about losing weight than maybe I want to admit, and
2. It’s probably the food, oh and
3. I’m older. Which changes everything.

Way back in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) days I had experimented with my food like a mad scientist. I identified a few foods that I needed to eliminate all together: dairy and wheat rising to the top of the list. I’ve done pretty good with the wheat for the past 8 years or so, but occasionally a cupcake sneaks in.

Dairy. It was so easy to give up. I rarely used milk, yogurt and sour cream showed up only occasionally and I wasn’t a huge cheese person. Then a few years ago someone accidentally put feta cheese on my salad. Then, at an Ayurveda training there was goat’s milk yogurt for breakfast. I fell in love with chai tea in India and couldn’t possibly use anything but whole milk in it when I came home. Which was just the gateway to half and half. Then I stumbled upon just three little words that would seal my dairy fate: goat’s milk cheese.

So dairy has inched its way back in and helped put some weight back on.

Before my formal education at IIN I had stumbled across the Blood Type Diet. There are many doubters, but here’s the thing: it’s just food, what would it hurt to just play with it?

I did and it worked. Absolutely, positively worked. It worked for me. It worked for others. When I was health coaching I always recommended it and if it was followed, it helped people lose weight, reduce inflammation, and minimize or eliminate allergies.

So naturally, after great success, I let it go.

Is it laziness? Ego? Somewhere in between I suspect. Habit plays a pretty significant role as well.

As much as I believed I was using the blood type diet and Ayurveda as lifestyle changes, somewhere in the back of my mind I thought of them as diets. Short term solutions. While I was in it, I was completely convinced that I had left all those habits behind, but habits, especially the unhelpful ones, have a way of bullying their way back in.

As I revisit the blood type diet I will do so with a sense of curiosity. I’ll take a new approach, challenge myself somehow. It is in my best interest.

Maybe that’s the problem.