When "The Sweet Life" was too sweet.

It's a bit like the post-Christmas let-down. I successfully navigated Marathon Sunday, the Yankees World Series win, multiple big college football games, the day in and day out desires to eat "normally," and most recently, the indulgent feast of Thanksgiving. Now what? I have no doubt that I will be able to handle this new lifestyle until I reach my goal, and it is not totally miserable, but I am still searching. I look forward to the end results, but I am still aware of the sacrifice - hard to focus on the positive process. I want to begin to ignore the sacrifice and embrace the new eating habits as a desirous choice, and not a sacrifice.

I've lost over 20 lbs, and 3 inches off my waist. But, I still feel like I am just following the rules; I am just biding my time, like an alligator drifting along and waiting for its prey to be eaten after this experiment is over. It is the wrong attitude of course, but it is how I am feeling at the moment. Although I have been thrilled at times by how I feel, and the weight I am losing, it is not consistent. I had a great time on Thanksgiving, but the day after I was left wondering, now what? And the answer? Keep it up for the next five months. Call it the vegan post-month let down.

Something did give me some good perspective last night, however, and oddly enough it was a Fellini film almost 50 years old.

Watching the classic Italian film "La Dolce Vita" I could not help but find the parallels of the character Marcello and the last 10 years of my life - searching for true happiness in wine, women, and song, and food, to limited success. The film, I think, is partly a commentary on the emptiness of self-indulgent excesses, so it was not a huge leap for me to draw parallels with my decade of indulgence through satisfying my appetite for life with whatever I fancied at that moment, with no internal governor, and zero thought to the adverse affects on my health.

I know the vital importance to living a salubrious life, and I know the road map. But I will truly achieve this goal when I make the jump from merely following the playbook to making it an intrinsic part of my life. I'm not there yet.