I ate eggs for breakfast all week and lost weight: A lesson in breaking patterns
On Monday, I received my latest edition of Chris Brogan’s Newsletter. I enjoy his newsletters every week, but this week’s newsletter was so good, I shared it with at least two dozen people. It was so good, in fact, that I am sharing my copy of the newsletter with you by hyper-linking the word “newsletter” until you go and read it for yourself (another link for good measure). So go ahead, open it in a new window, then come back so you can finish reading this post.
Read it? Okay great. Let’s continue…
As a busy working Mom, I thrive on patterns. Patterns/routines and all things synonymous keep my house from being completely chaotic. I wake up, get the kids ready for school, put on the coffee, and prepare my breakfast. For pretty close to a year, my breakfast has been the same thing every day: Blueberry yogurt with fiber rich granola. It’s not a bad breakfast, I have actually grown quite fond of my quick morning meal. I do switch it up a little from time to time. Sometimes, I eat it out of a green bowl, sometimes, out of a coffee cup, and sometimes, I stir the granola into the yogurt cup and take it “to go.”
After reading Chris’s challenge to “find three patterns and break them,” I was inspired to make this week into “The Week of Green Chile Smothered Eggs for Breakfast.” You see, I’m from Arizona. My Dad is a native New Mexican (as in, from New Mexico-home of Hatch Green Chile). My dearly departed maternal Grandfather was Spanish-American raised in the Mexican-American cultures of Southern Arizona. Needless to say, I know my chile (notice, I even spell it right). And when you know chile, you know that eggs are naked without being smothered in it. Add some spicy home fried potatoes and a flour tortilla, and you have Heaven on Earth.
So this week, instead of grabbing my yogurt, I grabbed my egg carton. Every. Single. Morning. I tried not to think about the calories or the carbs or the cholesterol. I just savored each bite. And by Thursday, I noticed a funny thing had happened. My jeans were just a hair looser than they were on Monday morning. I headed for the bathroom scale and wouldn’t you know it? I had lost 2 pounds.
I started to think about the patterns in my life that I perceive as being “healthy,” (like my yogurt and granola breakfast) and I came to a stunning revelation: Sometimes even “healthy” patterns weigh us down. We become so accustomed to doing things one way that we fail to innovate, experiment, or excite ourselves. Just because a habit isn’t necessarily “bad” doesn’t mean it’s always good.
I realized that the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” eventually leads to perpetual boredom. I considered how boredom is currently impacting my life as it applies to my work in the merchant processing industry. There is only so much to say about accepting credit card payments (and getting a good rate). Now, however, I’m inspired to find a new way to approach the topic, help people, and restore trust to the industry. The ideas are popping up so quickly that I can hardly sit still.
Maybe it’s just the capsaicin in the chile, but I’d like to think that breaking my breakfast pattern jump-started more than just my metabolism–it threw my zest for evolution into high gear.
Did you take the Chris Brogan Challenge? Do you want my green chile recipe? I’m easy to talk to, find me on Twitter!