A few weeks back, I jumped back on my never ending cycle of "I need to stop eating crap and start feeling better." My boss challenged me to the Advocare 10 Day Cleanse. I have done this cleanse (and 24 Day Challenge) before and I believe after I finished, I wrote a blog post about how I would never do one of these things again.
Well, I did it anyway. I bought the necessary items, waited for them to be shipped to my house and started on October 5th. My Mom and Dad are Advocare distributors and my parents do this thing every 90 days! My mom uses Advocare products everyday - do not speak to her before she has had her Spark in the morning. I've seen this work for my parents over and over again so I thought you know, it's only 10 days and I really need to feel better, LET'S DO IT!
Here are 10 things I learned while I was on the cleanse this time:
1. Keep your meals varied. I ate the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day for 7 days!!! While I didn't mind these meals, my body did not respond well the second week when I switched things up. I enjoyed (2) hard boiled eggs, (2) turkey sausage patties, and (1) banana for breakfast. For lunch, my trusty Mexi-Lime Quinoa Salad with grilled chicken. This gets better the longer it sits in the fridge but by day 5 my body was very tired of this meal.
2. Drink so much water you turn into a camel. I kept my 30 oz Yeti by my side throughout the whole 10 days. I really did try to drink a lot of water but I should have had more! My body was craving the water and I could not stand to drink another ounce by dinner time. Maybe add lemon to the water to make it different? Or no ice? Just chug and when you think you haven't chugged enough, chug some more.
3. Do not take your caffeine headache out on your husband. Spark is Advocare's version of coffee. Actually, I think it works better than coffee and you don't get the 3pm crash. But Spark has 60mg of caffeine in a serving while an 8 oz cup of coffee has about 425mg!! By day four, my body was deprived of it's addiction and I was officially detoxing. Your husband (who is not doing the cleanse) does not want to be at the end of your temper tantrum. Try to take this out on a punching bag or maybe go to the gym twice that day. Or better yet, lock yourself in a room until you are done detoxing.
4. Carbs are still my best friend but protein is a close second. I've seen how my body responds on minimal carbs so I made sure to include healthy complex carb options; sweet potatoes, whole wheat pasta, whole wheat tortillas, etc. On the second week, I changed my breakfast from eggs to oatmeal. I was surprised to notice my body was actually craving protein. This was a great change for me as usually my body is craving the energy from the carbs. I added back in the turkey sausage patties with my very bland oatmeal to give me a little more protein in the mornings.
5. Cravings are my biggest weakness. Do you have cravings? How do you stop them? I can't seem to figure this out. If I'm craving something, the worse thing I can do is deprive it. The longer I deprive myself the worse the craving becomes and eventually I purge and I am in a worse spot than when I was only craving it a little bit. I cheated on the cleanse... a few times. I gave into those cravings because my willpower is nonexistent.
6. Pounds don't matter as much as feeling better does. In the last year and a half, I have gained weight. Some has been fat weight but most of it has been muscle weight. Therefore, as most of you know, the scale is not my friend. The dunk tank is :) I measured myself on the scale the day I started the cleanse. The number was not pleasing but then again I did not feel my best either. Day 10 I felt pretty good, measured myself and only saw a 0.6 pound difference. Okay, well that wasn't what I was hoping for but I was feeling great.
7. It's very easy to go back to old patterns. The night after the cleanse I was so excited to feed into one of my cravings. We had Chinese food for dinner. After that meal I felt like I did right before I started the cleanse. Well, that was pointless. With Brenden gone this week, my little nutrition voice of reasoning is gone too. He is my voice of reason when I want to just fix a box of pasta. My mornings have been great but my dinners went right back to pasta and white rice! These are my comfort foods. They are food I look back on and think of home. Pineapple Chicken served with white rice, Fried Rice, Chicken Parmesan and Macaroni and Cheese. Ugh... Why can't I just grow up?
8. Meal prepping is everything! Now I understand why Brenden spends hours on end every Sunday preparing his meals for the week. Without meals prepped and ready to go, it is soo easy to stop at a fast food joint and grab breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's so easy to eat that processed food in your pantry. With meals prepped, you immediately turn to that fresh food sitting in your refrigerator. You do not want it to go to waste and you already spent so much time prepping it you might as well eat it. It is also the reason we schedule our meals on Sunday.
9. The people around you do not need to be effected by your choices. Just because you decided you wanted to do a cleanse does not mean you need to tell everyone "Oh I'm on a cleanse. I can't have that." I'm so guilty of this. I used it as an excuse. I tried to let my bad mood be excused because well I'm detoxing. I tried to get out of events because well, I'm on a cleanse. But some events you can't get out of. You have to live life through those "difficult times." Don't let being on a cleanse effect everything you do in your life. Yes you need food to survive but hey, guess what, you can eat before that event or wait until after. Easier said than done because again, I have no willpower.
10. "Fad Diets" are not for me. Cleansing isn't really a diet but it puts restrictions on what I can and cannot have. There has to be a balance to normal life and healthy life. I'm determined to find it. While I felt great in the last few days of the cleanse, I do not know that cheating on it can count as actually completing it. If eating pizza and drinking wine were the prescription to getting healthy and fit, I would be set! But that is why we live in a world of morbidly obese people. Dieting and healthy eating are not easy. Finding that balance may kill me but I'm going to keep pursuing until I find that perfect match.
I write this post to let you know, I am just a normal human looking for the easy way out. I do not think the word lazy is appropriate but I do think in my generation, we are looking for that quick(-er) fix. A cleanse seems like a great option. Well, it is not meant for that. It is supposed to be a kick start to a healthier you. Get your system back to the basics and then start living your healthiest life.
As most of you know, nutrition and diet is one thing I struggle with the most. Some days I wish I would have stuck to my guns and finished school in that nutrition degree but then I think who knows what my life would be like. Everything happens for a reason. It's the attitude we choose to have that makes the world of difference. So my attitude towards this is to live and learn. I'm glad I did it because I learned 10 new things about myself.
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