Don't Walk...Run!

Last month my posts were all about the food changes I challenged myself to make. Six weeks later, I've hit my first rough patch. There have been significant changes at home and my work schedule was rough this week. I was doing early rounds at the hospital and attenting late meetings or events most nights. I allowed gluten and more sugar to creep back into my diet. The consequence? Poor sleep, low energy, breakouts in my skin, and the return of my daily stomach pains. 

I'm resolving right now to put an end to it. I felt too good the past month to go back in this direction. Right now I'm going gluten free and refined sugar free again - indefinitely. 

On a more positive note, two months ago I decided I was going to start running. This was HUGE for me because I've never even been able to run a mile without wanting to die. Multiple times I've tried (and failed) to become a runner. I tried to run around the high school track with my friend in our teens and quit because I was so much slower than she was. I tried to do the "Couch to 5K" plan in college and decided my time was better spent studying. I planned to do a 5K mud run last fall with my cousin and could barely finish on race day due to lack of preparation. Each failed attempt re-affirmed my belief that I was incapable of running.

I really can't pinpoint what was different this time, but I've really been sticking to it. My goal has been to run every other day and I've mostly been able to keep it up. And when I haven't, and two or three days have lapsed, I haven't given up! I'm not fast and I'm building my distance gradually, but I've never felt more in control of my body. Huge success!

Food Challenge

The entire past six months have been a whirlwind. Between the emotional drain of selling and moving out of our first house, the anxiety associated with "home" hopping from apartments to family homes, and the stress of shifting work hours I've felt like I was a mess. I've professed it many times before on this blog, but I'll repeat it again - I am an emotional eater. The roller coaster of our life saw me eating all the time. Sometimes I felt like I was eating just because food was something familiar in the midst of so much upheaval. It is an absolute miracle that I did not really gain weight during all this craziness - I basically fluctuated up and down the same 5-10 pounds.

About a month ago (just as I was pushing through my final preparations for bug's 5th birthday celebration), I decided something had to change. I was drinking 4+ cups of coffee per day, struggling to prepare meals, forgetting to pack my lunch for work (and eating junk), getting cranky with my kids, not making any time to exercise, and feeling really down on myself.

Then, inspiration came in the form of a pack of vitamin supplements from Trader Joe's. The box advertised a two week "Total Body Cleanse", but I think that gives the wrong impression. Most cleanses you read about suggest you do strange things like drink massive quantities of water or only eat one specific food or take supplements that make you go to the bathroom a million times a day to "clean out" your colon. This wasn't at all like that. The suggestions on the box were to "drink plenty of water", "reduce your intake of processed foods, simple carbohydrates, beef, pork, dairy, wheat and soy products", and "avoid caffeine, alcohol, sugar, potatoes, saturated fats, trans fats, and artificial sweeteners."

I'm not a nutrition expert, but I'm a smart girl. And I know all those suggestions are pretty basic thoughts on eating a well rounded diet. I decided I was done pretending I was eating well by following these rules 75% of the day and then eating junk the other 25%. I was actually going to do it. I was in all the way. I was going to get it all out of my system (sugar, caffeine, gluten, alcohol, processed foods, etc!), keep it out of my system, and see how I felt about things when the two weeks were up.

For 14 days I took the supplements from Trader Joe's. I didn't feel any side effects or really any effects at all from these. Maybe they helped, maybe not. I completely eliminated caffeine, alcohol, refined sugar, processed foods, and gluten from my diet. I decreased my consumption of animal protein significantly. I stopped eating all dairy the first week and started having yogurt again the second week.

If you are interested in replicating my plan and want to know what I was eating, I'd advise you to refer back to the blog posts I made while I was doing the cleanse because I kept a complete food diary including meals, snacks, and drinks.
Days 1-4
Days 5-7
Days 8-10
Days 11-14

Today I'm going to share my general comments, conclusions, and results.

• The first few days of the cleanse SUCKED. After reading Wheat Belly (more on this book in another post) I am pretty certain everything I was going through was wheat withdrawal. I had headaches, body aches, extreme fatigue, and zero exercise tolerance. The best way I can describe it was a vague, generalized yuckiness like I was coming down with the flu (without any runny nose or cough). 
• After the third day, I started to feel normal again. Except it wasn't my usual "normal", it was BETTER. 
• I had energy and didn't need coffee to start my day. 
• I didn't wake up starving like usual - in fact, I often didn't even eat anything until a few hours after I was up because my stomach wasn't grumbling and empty. 
• I was nervous that eating vegetables, eggs, fruits, and nuts would leave me starving a few hours later. I soon found I was actually LESS hungry than if I ate toast, cereal, or another typical "breakfast" food.
• I found myself feeling more satisfied after eating smaller nutrient dense meals than I would after eating a huge portion of spaghetti and meatballs with Italian bread and butter - one of my favorite meals previously. 
• Obviously I was eating more vegetables, but I also started eating a lot more fresh herbs and using more spices to give flavor to my food naturally. 
• Everything tasted better because I was paying attention to my food, not shoveling it in my face because my blood sugars were crashing.
• The money I was "saving" by not hitting up fast food, coffee shops, or takeout I could funnel into higher quality meats and produce.
• After the initial decrease in exercise tolerance, I had a huge burst of motivation to start working out more often. I think a huge part of this was that I was no longer having crazy oscillations in my blood sugars from eating too much wheat and sugar which would leave me feeling too "sick" to exercise.
• Prior to this change I never was able to work out after eating because I was always too full and felt like I would throw up. This severely limited the times that I could exercise due to my busy schedule and kept me from getting the workouts I wanted and needed.
• I didn't get a single headache or stomachache after the first three days. I always considered it a "minor inconvenience", but prior to making these changes mild stomach aches and discomfort were a normal part of my day

All the things I described above are AWESOME and proof that making healthy changes can have a huge impact, but they were all internal mind shifts. I am sure everyone is wondering what the actual physical changes were, so here they are:

• Multiple people (aware or not of the diet changes I was making) commented that my skin looked great and asked if I was using new cosmetics.
• I always considered that I was an "unlucky person" with mild adult acne, but I haven't had a single pimple since changing my diet.
• I didn't take a waist or thigh measurement (I wish now that I did), but I dropped 1-2 pant sizes depending on the cut and store.
• My stomach feels and looks noticeably slimmer. Unfortunately,I have a lot more ab work to do now to tighten up post-baby belly because the fat "filling it out" is gone.
• The final verdict was a weight loss of 9 pounds over the two week period.

Since finishing the cleanse I have definitely liberalized some of the restrictions, but really have no desire to go back to the way I was before. I feel better about my relationship with food than I ever have in my whole life and it's pretty amazing. I'll be posting a full update soon, so please check back if you want to hear more!

The Home Stretch

Just a few more hours to go before my "cleanse" is over and I'm really excited. Not excited so I can indulge and go back to my old ways, but because I feel great and have learned a lot about my body. It's a really wonderful feeling.

As I recap the last few days, let me remind you what the goals of my cleanse were:

• Daily Trader Joe's Total Body Cleanse supplements
• No caffeine
• No alcohol
• No refined sugar
• No gluten
• No processed or pre-packaged foods
• Try to eat at least 50% of my diet as raw foods

Day 11 - 5/8

Today was a rough emotional day for me. A little over a year ago my practice was absorbed into a larger health care system. A few (huge) benefits of this were a brand new, larger office space and the hire of my new nurse. My nurse couldn't be any more perfect of a fit for me (she loves Phish, shops at Trader Joe's and the local co-op, and is incredibly sweet to our patients) and I am so happy with my new office. The downside is dealing with layers and layers of corporate administration whenever something is wrong. Unfortunately for me, the thing that has been wrong multiple times is my pay. I discovered another error on Thursday and (as usual) was unable to reach the person I needed to talk to. I felt really powerless and frustrated. Normally an afternoon like this would end with me sitting in a pile of candy and Taco Bell wrappers hyped up on caffeine from a sweeter-than-I-usually-drink coffee from Starbucks feeling horrible. But it didn't this time. It didn't even enter my mind. Wow.

Breakfast - Smoothie (blueberries, organic whole milk yogurt, banana, chia seeds, water to blend), hard boiled egg

Lunch - Leftover Asian Salad with honey lime dressing topped with raw cashews

Snack - Pear

Dinner - Homemade steak gyros (steak, cucumbers, tomatoes) on corn tortillas with homemade tzatziki sauce and corn on the cob

Snack - herbal tea, small bite of homemade energy bars (I'll post my recipe soon!)

Day 12 - 5/9

Today was a much better day. I never got an answer to my pay question, but at least got in touch with the right person to discuss the problem. This evening was my first challenge with eating out at a restaurant. My monthly book club met at an Italian restaurant (like hardest place to find food fitting my rules!). I was hoping for an entree salad, but there wasn't anything like that on the menu so I went for the best option I could and boxed up half of the meal to bring home to my husband. It was definitely the richest meal I've eaten since starting my cleanse (and I enjoyed every bite), but I wasn't tempted to overindulge on liquor or dessert.

Breakfast - Smoothie (blueberries, organic whole milk yogurt, banana, chia seeds, water to blend), homemade energy bar (dates, cashews, and sunflower seeds)

Snack - Herbal tea, raw cashews

Lunch - Chicken breast roasted with tomatoes, green vegetables in walnut pesto (purchased from the hot food bar at the Honest Weight Co-op and elderberry Kombucha

Snack - Pear

Dinner - Garden salad with house made Italian dressing on the side (it was delicious, but as I didn't know what was in it, I only used a very small amount) and chicken picatta with roasted potatoes and green beans

I went for a short 3/4 mile jog to my in-laws house to meet my husband and the girls.

Day 13 - 5/10

Today was supposed to be rainy, but turned out gorgeous! I went for a jog in the late morning (my best effort yet) and got to enjoy some real quality time with my family

Breakfast - Two egg omelette full of veggies (spinach, red peppers, and mushrooms) topped with chopped tomato (I shared with baby bear who LOVES tomatoes and apparently cooked spinach)

Snack - Pear

Lunch - Chopped lettuce, cucumbers, cabbage, and tomatoes with leftover tzatziki sauce

Snack - Homemade energy bar

Dinner - Baby spinach salad with red cabbage, sweet potatoes, and avocado

I went for my usual 1.8 mile walk/jog talking only a short walk break and jumping right back into it. I think on my next run I might make it the whole distance! I finished up with abs and arms as usual.

Day 14 - 5/11 Mother's Day!!
Today was a fabulous day with my family. My husband got up early and put the baby bear back to bed with me and he and the bug let me sleep. Bug even had Daddy make me a hard boiled egg for breakfast because she knows I like them, how sweet! We started our day off with breakfast, pictures, and tons of play at a gorgeous town park. Then, we came home and the girls relaxed a bit while I put the finishing touches on a few dishes to share at Mother's Day dinner. We spent the rest of the day at my in-law's house with our extended family. My mom is still in Florida so we only got to see her on Facetime, but it was better than nothing!Overall, it was a very relaxing day and I didn't spend a second worrying about food.

Breakfast - Hard boiled egg, homemade energy bar, and Starbucks iced coffee (this was my mother's day "cheat" and it was totally worth it!)
Lunch - Organic "power greens" mix and leftover chicken chili with avocado/organic yogurt mashed together
Snack - Blackberries
Dinner - Grilled chicken, grilled portabellas, salad greens, curried quinoa salad, moroccan carrot salad, and fruit salad (honeydew, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries)

Weight Watchers and Real Food

For the record, I was awake for 10 whole minutes today before a kid woke up. I didn't even move, I just laid there listening to the silence. Somehow, the older one still sensed that I was awake. She shuffled into the room and I pulled back the covers for her without saying anything. Miraculously, she snuggled between daddy and I and WENT BACK TO SLEEP.

I enjoyed the snuggle for a few minutes before slipping out of bed to try for that forbidden peaceful cup of coffee again. Just as I was adding the milk I heard the baby yelling out for a "baba". She's 15 months old so I really need to wean her off of it...but today is not that day. Giving her a bottle bought me ten whole minutes of quiet. Sweet, blissful quiet with nothing to do other than sip my HOT coffee and read Pinterest. When she finished the bottle we just snuggled and were silly together for a half hour while everyone else slept. These are the moments we just don't get enough of. Today is going to be a good day.

Low natural lighting in the kitchen made these shots a little fuzzy, but I love them anyway

I thought I'd take a few minutes this morning to share some advice about following Weight Watchers and sticking to an unprocessed, real food diet. A little over a year ago I joined WW for the first time. As I had an exclusively breastfeeding newborn I was allotted 46 points plus per day. I have to be honest, between the diet and breastfeeding I was dropping weight like crazy even eating oreos and Dunkin Donuts wake-up wraps on a daily basis. I went from post-baby weight to pre-baby weight in about a month and from post-baby weight to my lowest adult weight since I was in college in less than 6 months.

Then, the seasons started to change and the stress of selling a house, building a house, the holidays, and moving set in. I wasn't get fresh food from the Farmer's Market. My Weight Watchers subscription was cancelled. I was not going to the gym. The baby was nursing less. I was eating more processed foods. Nearly every successfully lost pound crept back on.

A year after my initial success I decided to start back up again. As I no longer have gads of points each day I need to focus a lot more on choosing "good" foods. Foods that are high in nutrients, satisfying, and that I "feel good" about eating. Here are my tips on combining a typical lower point (26) Weight Watcher's plan with real food ideas:

1. Real the labels! A trap a lot people following WW fall into is buying everything low fat or fat free because the point calculation is lower. This is a horrible idea. To save yourself a few points you will be filling your body with chemicals, additives, and fillers. You can find *some* reduced fat products that are only made with real ingredients (most dairy products), but you need to be extremely discerning and real your labels.
2. Plan ahead. If you have kids, or a job, or both you need to have your meals planned out or you will find yourself struggling to stay on the plan. Check back later this week for some easy meal plans to get through the week days.
3. Always have fruits and veggies on hand. Making healthy foods available will make you much more likely to eat them. For busy times of the day, having your produce prepped ahead of time is key - cut melon, rinsed grapes, easy to peel clementines, bananas, rinsed salad greens, sliced peppers, celery sticks, cherry tomatoes. For calmer times I find having a fruit I need to "work on" for a snack makes it more satisfying - grapefruit, cherries, kiwi.
4. Care about the food, not the diet. If you spend your time thinking about how safe and whole the foods you are eating are instead of calculating points on all the foods you know you shouldn't have, you will naturally make good choices! If you read the ingredient label on that box of Cheez-its you won't care that you can get away with 1/2 a serving for 3 points. You'll realize there are so many things in there that you don't want in your body it will be easy to chose a tablespoon of fresh ground almond butter and banana slices instead.
5. Splurge for real. Instead of planning myself a mini splurge every day (one cookie, a handful of chocolate chips, etc) which just ended up reintroducing all the "bad stuff" back into my system I plan one real splurge on a high quality item - a good piece of dark chocolate (not Hershey kisses), a handmade baked good (not Dunkin Donuts), a chunk of good full fat cheese (never eat the fat free stuff!), a few slices of good quality bacon (not turkey bacon), etc. 

Happy Sunday and Happy Eating!