I was known as the Salad Girl at my job because I consistently had salads for lunch in the staff kitchen.

Suddenly after 23 years of having salads for lunch I was done with having salads at noon time. The buying of the lettuce and other food, schlepping it to work, and preparing the salad nearly every day took its toll.

I remembered what my trainer at the gym told me a year ago after I lamented to him that I wondered what particular kinds of food I should eat to be healthy.

He responded to my granular ethic thus: “Eat food. You just have to eat food. Whatever kind of food it is just eat.”

That said it got easier when I changed up my weekly routine this winter. Buying organic lettuce and organic salad toppings in my weekly grocery order. Prepping salads for DINNER three or four days a week. Having the salad with a side of steamed shrimp one night or a can of Cento tuna in olive oil with the salad on another night. With slices of avocado.

The curious improvement was that when I started having salads for dinner I felt good in the evening. The food you eat can improve your mood. Feeling good was the motivation I had for continuing this new dinnertime habit.

In keeping with what my trainer told me I found other food to have for lunch at my job. Though I’m not a vegetarian and I have chicken I eat chicken only once or twice a week. Buying organic chicken to have as a meal for one dinner with an organic vegetable from a frozen bag.

My old friend the deli counter is where I buy a baked salmon filet to heat up on one other night. With regular Brussel sprouts or a beet salad from the friendly deli counter offerings.

Like I said it’s often when we decide “Enough is enough!” that we’re motivated to change our habits or our routine.

Turning 60 in the spring I’m going to create a 20-year plan in which to achieve my goals and resolutions. A person like me isn’t supposed to live to 80. We die 20 years earlier than the regular population according to naysayers who parrot this claim.

This simply isn’t true when you take care of your health the best you can with what you were given. Any of us with a disadvantage–popping pills we need to take to be well; having a genetic medical issue; whatever it is–we can choose to do what’s in our control to improve.

The things we can’t control we should accept. Focus instead on what’s in our power to change. Know that there’s no shame regardless of our fitness level or lack of fitness.

Perfection is a myth because it implies there can be no growth. What I’ve learned and have come to accept is that I can have other food and maintain my health.

In coming blog entries I’ll talk about the epiphanies that hit me in recent weeks re: achieving and sustaining wellness.