Earlier this year I (30m) had a strong moment of clarity and realised I ordered too much food delivery. I didn't really know how often I ordered*, but I just knew it was too much and I needed to break the cycle. It's really easy to order food delivery where I live, and pretty cheap too, so the threshold is really low. I just order through an app, delivery times are usually somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes, and more times than not there are no delivery costs (and if there are, it's just 1 or 2 euro).
Obviously it wasn't just how often I ordered, but the type and amount of food too. Most of the time it was pizza with meat toppings, or pita bread with shawarma. My favourite -and probably the biggest calorie bomb ever- is the 'kapsalon' (it literally means: hairdressing salon, because it was invented by a hairdresser in Rotterdam). It's a layer of fries, shawarma or doner kebab and cheese, that got put in the oven for a bit, so the cheese melts on top of the rest; then a layer of some lettuce/tomatoes/onions (which I often scraped off). And then I'd just drown that thing in a garlic mayonnaise sauce. It's ridiculous, I loved it, and it's about 1800 calories.
There were also days where I placed an order because I didn't have any soft drinks at home and I was too lazy to go the supermarket (which is only a few hundred meters from my house). I'd first add a few cans of cola or sprite to my order, and then some food, because they don't deliver drinks only. On other days I'd order lunch (most of the time it was two 30cm subs), and then later in the day I'd order dinner as well. And I can’t forget the days where I ordered extra so I had leftover pizza for breakfast the next day.
I've been trying to turn things around and improve my health for years, but every time I did, I always went all-in and tried to change everything all at once. It never worked; it was just unsustainable. I knew I had to break it up in parts; start to improve one thing, let it become my new normal, and only then start improving another thing. I looked at all the things I wanted and needed to change, and I found ordering food delivery -for me- was the most damaging, both in terms of finances (even if it's cheap, if you order a lot, it's still expensive) and amount of fat and calories. So that's where I started.
I realised I needed to treat it as an addiction that I had to quit, so I downloaded an app to stay sober and purposefully turned on the daily motivation notifications, because I knew I needed them - especially the first few weeks. Some of them are a bit corny ("only dead fish go with the flow"), but they helped me to remind myself that I am making improvements to my health. I also joined a few subreddits for extra motivation; being able to see what sustained change can mean for my health and self-image really helped me realise it's a long, hard process, that eventually pays off.
What also helped was seeing the number of days rise. If I had a tough day, I reminded myself to think of that number, how hard I worked for it to see it increase every day and how it would be a shame if I just threw that away because I felt like ordering a pizza, or a 'kapsalon'. So today, I haven't ordered food delivery in six months, I've been counting calories for three months (and making changes in my diet to lower them ever since), and haven't had a soft drink in 2,5 months. I've also been crying for the last half hour because I'm so happy and proud of my progress, which I haven't been of myself in a really, really long time.
I'm definitely not where I need to be, yet. I was under 180kg (400-ish lbs) last week for the first time in a long time, so I still have a long road ahead of me, but reminding myself of these small victories -and seeing everybody else's progress- really motivates me to keep going. Thank you!
(*I actually looked it up for this post. In 2019 I placed 137 orders for a total of 3,045 euros. The first 6 weeks of 2020: 22 orders, 439 euros.)
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/ibzawi/nsv_i_havent_ordered_food_delivery_in_six_months/
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