Life After Detox...

So let's start with the Final Stats for the Detox:
Day 1: 190 lbs
Day 2: 188.8 lbs (-1.2 lbs)
Day 3: 186.6 lbs (-3.4 lbs)
Day 4: 186.2 lbs (-3.8 lbs)
Day 5: 187.6 lbs (-2.4 lbs)
Day 6: 186.8 lbs (-3.2 lbs)
Day 7: 186 lbs (-4 lbs)
Final Weigh In For Detox Results:  184.6 lbs (-5.4 lbs)

I lost a total of 5.4 pounds in 7 days on the detox.  That's pretty stinkin' good!  I've never lost that much in one week.  It's not the ten or fifteen pounds I've heard of other people losing, but it's great.  I'm totally happy with it because it's something I think I can maintain.  That would be awesome if I just kept losing and didn't gain it all back. 

I want to share some of thoughts on the detox now that it's over. 

First, it was hard.  Dang hard.  There were nights that I wanted a big greasy hamburger so bad that I felt like I might crawl out of my skin.  But I made it through to the other side.  I had headaches, but I made through.  I was grumpy, but I made it through.  I wanted to give up, but my husband got me refocused on the goal and I made it through.  I made it through and it was worth it!

Here's a couple of things I learned:
1.  I'm addicted to crappy food.  Seriously.  The withdrawal from nasty food the first couple of days was torture.  I felt like crap.  I've got to give that stuff up.  I don't want to be addicted to anything. 
2.  I don't need near the amount of food I think I do.  I got to point on the detox that I wasn't starving all the time.  I've heard of your stomach shrinking as you eat less and I don't know if that's what happened, but I definitely don't need the amount of food I was putting in my body every single day to be satisfied. 
3.  You have to do things your own way.  If I would have tried to do the detox exactly like Tosca Reno did and blogged about on her blog I would have dropped out the second day.  I had to make it my own and include fruit.  Find what works for you and do it.

Final thoughts on the detox:
I'm so glad I did it!  I'll definitely do it again.  I think next time I'll follow the Reboot Program and do the the Standard Reboot.  I can definitely feel the benefits of what I did and think the Reboot Program would be even more beneficial.  I'm thinking right after Christmas when we are all bombarded with food would be a good time to do the Reboot and maybe right before summer as we're getting ready for swimsuit season.  We'll see what works into my life at that point.

I'm really happy with where the scale ended up.  My goal was not to lose a ton of weight.  It was to rest my body.  Get the crappy food out and prepare my body with a clean slate for the good food.  Your body will work even better with good healthy food if there's no junk in the way. 

Moving on from here...I am ready!  This has shown me that I can do amazing things with food if I'm determined.  Yes, I'll screw up and eat junk every once and a while, but it won't blow me completely off my game and I won't get so side tracked that I don't know how to get back on the right track. 

For example here's what I ate today:
I started the day with whole wheat toast and a tablespoon of 100% fruit jelly, along with an over easy egg.  I couldn't wait to end the detox and eat an egg!  Yummy!  By the way, you'll notice no coffee here.  I was without coffee the entire detox and I feel like I've got the caffeine monster beat.  My goal is to no go back to it.

For lunch...oh my word!  Remember when I shared this picture with you about how 400 calories of different food stacks up in your stomach.  People I am taking that information to heart.  I want to get the most out of my calories!  So today I had a huge salad with green leaf lettuce, spinach, arugula.  I tossed it with a little of the good extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and topped it all with a veggie burger and some fat free feta cheese.  At the end I was stuffed and it only came to about 300 calories!  Perfect!

For dinner I went out with some girl friends for a girls night out.  It was a super fun kid free night.  We went to Daily Grill, which has a super cheap happy hour.  I had a plate of seared ahi tuna and then I split a plate of garlic, rosemary and Parmesan fries.  Super yummy.  I also had a couple of bites of a friends mac and cheese, another bite of her brownie, and another bite of another friends key lime pie.  I didn't order dessert because I knew I'd devour the whole thing.  Oh and I had a couple of awesome drinks  : )
I think it was a great day back to eating good healthy food.  I'm excited about where I'm going to go from here!

Day 7 of the Detox.....Done!

I'm done with the detox!! Woohoo!!
Here are the stats as of today (I'll post my final stats tomorrow morning after I weigh):
Day 1: 190 lbs
Day 2: 188.8 lbs (-1.2 lbs)
Day 3: 186.6 lbs (-3.4 lbs)
Day 4: 186.2 lbs (-3.8 lbs)
Day 5: 187.6 lbs (-2.4 lbs)
Day 6: 186.8 lbs (-3.2 lbs)
Day 7: 186 lbs (-4 lbs)

Today I had a banana while rushing out the door because we were late for church!  Most Sundays seem to follow that same routine : )  At church some sweet friends asked us to come over for lunch so we went and had a great time.  Luckily for me my friend is a fellow health nut and made some awesome and healthy food.  We had some of the best hamburgers I've had and they were made with turkey.  They even had applesauce mixed in!  She's giving me the recipe and I can't wait to try it at home.  We also had homemade healthy mac and cheese.  Seriously this stuff was made with whole wheat pasta, egg whites and skim milk, and low fat cheese.  It was superb!  I see my kids munching on this in the future.  We also had some yummy fruit!
That was a pretty big lunch so I wasn't very hungry the rest of the day.  For dinner I had juice made from one fuji apple, one granny smith apple, a bunch of spinach, and some cherries.  I also mixed in my TRI-Cleanse and Raw Green Super Food Powder.

For now I'll just saw that I'm glad I did the detox.  I'll share more thoughts on it and what I've learned from it in post this next week.

Day 6 of the Detox.... Almost Done

Here are the updated stats:
Day 1: 190 lbs
Day 2: 188.8 lbs (-1.2 lbs)
Day 3: 186.6 lbs (-3.4 lbs)
Day 4: 186.2 lbs (-3.8 lbs)
Day 5: 187.6 lbs (-2.4 lbs)
Day 6: 186.8 lbs (-3.2 lbs)

Today my sweet husband decided that we needed to restart a family tradition that we had stopped doing almost a year ago.  So, we all piled in the car and headed to our local donut shop for Saturday morning donuts.  Umm....yeah, I'm not gonna lie and tell you that I sat there and sipped on my juice.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  Instead I enjoyed a quite yummy not healthy bacon, egg, and cheese croissant.  Here's some food for thought though.  I used to eat one of those and a donut and maybe a couple of donut holes too along with a soda.  Today I just had the croissant and a bottled water.  Not perfect, but progress.
After that breakfast I wasn't hungry most of the day.  Around 2pm I decided to make some juice.  This one had a fuji apple, a granny smith apple, a handful of grapes, and a nectarine.  It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. 

At dinner when my family was wolfing down there dinner I started to get really hungry and also started getting in a pretty bad mood because I wanted their dinner.  Man, I'm seriously addicted to food.  My sweet husband talked me down though and decided on some brown rice.  It was just what I needed.
I've also had tons of water today.  So, despite the pitiful start it's ended up being pretty good.  We'll see what the scale says tomorrow.

Day 5 of the Detox Complete...

Let's start with the stats:
Day 1: 190 lbs
Day 2: 188.8 lbs (-1.2 lbs)
Day 3: 186.6 lbs (-3.4 lbs)
Day 4: 186.2 lbs (-3.8 lbs)
Day 5: 187.6 lbs (- 2.4 lbs)
Yep, so my weight went up.  After last nights cheating I knew it would.  I wasn't surprised or upset and it just helped me get back on track today.

I woke up today so thirsty.  I guess there was a lot of salt in that food I had last night.  I drank 64 ounces of water with no problem today.
For breakfast I some awesome citrus juice.  Today's juice included a whole navel orange, a half grapefruit, and 1/4 pineapple.  It was super yummy.

I really wasn't hungry most of the day so I just went about my business and didn't worry about it.  Around dinner time I finally started getting hungry so I made another juice.  This one had one fuji apple, one green apple, one stalk celery, one bunch spinach, three kale leaves, and one carrot.  I had never juiced kale before.  It doesn't produce a lot of juice, but what I made was still really good.

I would never normally consume this little of food, but I seriously haven't been hungry. I'm sure tomorrow I'll be starving. I kind of feel like my stomach's getting smaller and it doesn't take as much to keep me full anymore. That's a great thing in my book.
On to some more exciting news. I got new pillows for our couch today. I think I've mentioned before that we're redecorating. We bought a couch about three weeks ago and I've been having the hardest time finding pillows to go with it. Today I hit the jackpot at World Market. I'm super happy with them and the hubster loves them. He even bought me a nice new rug to go with them. Score!  I can't wait until we're done with the downstairs so I can move on to the upstairs!

Day 4 of the Detox....I Cheated

First, my new stats:
Day 1: 190 lbs
Day 2: 188.8 lbs (-1.2 lbs)
Day 3: 186.6 lbs (-3.4 lbs)
Day 4: 186.2 lbs (-3.8 lbs)
So, still going down, but not as quickly. Still good.

Man today was weird.  First off, I didn't feel like eating.  Like at all.  Around 11:30 when I was feeding my brood lunch I had a half a banana just because I felt like I should eat something even though I wasn't hungry.  Then around 2pm I got a little hungry and had a juice.  I had spinach, carrot, pear, cherry, and blueberry.  It was so yummy.  I don't know why I'm obsessed with how the juice looks before I shake it up, but seriously it's so pretty.

Then I wasn't hungry again...until...we went to dinner with friends for one of their birthdays. Yep, then the hunger hit like a mack truck and I was not prepared. Not.at.all.  So, I cheated.  Big time.  I had chicken fingers and fried pickles.  Oh my word, the pickles.  Amazing!  I also had one of the cupcakes that I made for my friend.  Here's a picture of some of them.  I got the idea from here.  They turned out pretty good and they were super tasty too.  I finally put on my smarty pants and realized that I needed to send the left overs home with our friends so I wouldn't pig out on them tomorrow.  So, no worries there.  I had one and now they're gone.

Btw, my friend is a huge San Francisco Giants fan, thus the San Francisco Giants Cupcakes.

Am I upset that I cheated?  Nope.  I'm not going to beat myself up over it.  I've stuck to this detox for 3.5 days now and I've done awesome.  No cheating at all.  Even when I really wanted to.  So, I messed up once.  Big deal.  It's not going to kill me.  I fully expect the scale to move up tomorrow and I'm okay with that.  I'm still in the detox 100% and I know I'll be fine the rest of the time.  Life happens.  Birthdays happen.  Bad food choices happen.  We move on.  I love our friends and I'm glad we got to be a part of one of their birthdays.  It was an epic night.

Day 3 of the Detox

I made it through day 3! I have to admit though that I might kill someone if they walked in my house with a cheeseburger right now. It's really pretty sad how addicted I am to total crap food.
Here are the stats:
Day 1: 190 lbs
Day 2: 188.8 (-1.2 lbs)
Day 3: 186.8 (-3.2 lbs)
I'm pretty pleased with those results!

I started my day with a super yummy fresh squeezed citrus juice.  Here it is all cut up and ready to go in the juicer.  Let's see, we've got half a grapefruit, a whole navel orange, a lemon, and a lime.  I love fresh citrus juice, but let me just state for the record that peeling all this fruit is a total pain in my behind!

Here it is all juiced up and ready to get into my belly!  Yumminess all around!

A little while later I decided to try some Kambucha that I bought earlier in the week. I've read that it's supposed to be good for you because of the active bacteria in it (like yogurt).  Hmmm....it reminded me of beer.  I'm not a beer drinker.  Like at all.  I've maybe had two beers in my entire life.  So, yeah.  This wasn't rockin' my socks.  It wasn't horrible and I did drink it all.  I still have two more bottles in the fridge and I'll finish those, but I probably won't buy it again.

I can finally have some non-juiced food, so for lunch I had brown rice (which I cooked in beef broth) with some raw spinach, kale, and mushrooms.  It was yummy.

Then for dinner I had some more fantastic juice.  I forgot to take a picture before I juiced everything, but I had spinach, arugula, carrot, celery, apple, and pear.  It was sooooo good.  Look how pretty it was before I mixed it all together.

I followed the juice with some more brown rice with spinach, arugula, red bell pepper, mushrooms, asparagus.  I actually think this might be really good when I'm done with the detox and I cook the asparagus and mushrooms and add some feta cheese and garlic.

So, day 3 is done and I'm doing well.  No headache today!  Yeah!  Hopefully I'm coming out of the addiction to nasty food.  I didn't get in any exercise today.  We were super busy because I had to take the baby to the doctor (hate having a sick baby...boo).
On a side note, tomorrow is a good friend of ours birthday and I said I would make cupcakes for him.  There are currently 24 chocolate cupcakes cooling in my kitchen.  The smell is about to over power me.  I was good however, and rinsed the bowl and beaters immediately so that I couldn't dig into any raw cake batter.

Day 2 of the Detox

I made it through day 2!!!!

Ok, first let me give you the stats.  I weighed in yesterday at 190.  Today I weighed in at 188.8.  So, that's a 1.2 pound loss in one day.  We'll see what I weigh in at tomorrow, but it seems like things are working.

I woke up this morning with a killer headache (like couldn't get out of bed headache).  I'm sure it's my body withdrawing from all the crap I eat.  I took some pain killer and once the headache was gone I started my day out with some pomberry coconut water.  Hmmm....I had such high hopes for this stuff.  I see people at the gym drinking it all the time and I've read such good things about it.  I just didn't like it.  I was really bummed.  However, it didn't go to waste.  My 18 month old has been having some nasty tummy troubles and needed some electrolytes.  Well, this stuff has them so I thought I'd see if he liked it and he did!  Yeah!  So, he chugged the stuff while the thought of it made me gag.

After the nastiness of the coconut water I decided to make some juice.  I saw a juice on another blog that looked good so I decided to give it a shot.  I had watermelon, celery, carrot and cucumber.  Here it is prejuice:

Here it is post-juice.  Doesn't it look appetizing?  No?  Yeah, it didn't look great to me either.  It also tasted really bad.  Again, I was disappointed.   I think if I had followed the recipe on the blog it might have been better (there was a lemon and ginger in the other one), but I didn't have the ginger so I just made it with what I had.  I drank about 1/4 of it.

Next up I had some beef broth (@8 ounces). Not great (it's just broth), but whatever, I didn't expect greatness.

Then I realized that I needed some water so I grabbed a Blackberry Hint Water.  It was good.  Not as good as yesterday's honeydew hibiscus hint water, but still good.

I finished up the day with more juice.  This time I had two apples, a pear, a carrot, a bunch of spinach, and a bunch of blueberries.

Look how pretty it was straight out of the juicer!  Now this was good.  In fact it may be one of my new favorite juices.  Definitely going to be making this again.

So, how did I feel today? I actually felt pretty good! I'm definitely more hungry than I was yesterday, but once I got past the headache this morning I was good to go. I even felt like exercising. I did a new workout dvd that is on instant watch on Netflix.  It's Crunch Super Slim Down Pilates and Yoga Blend.  I loved it!  It was exactly what I needed.  About 3 minutes in I thought "this is really easy, I'm not going to get a good workout", but about half way through I was working up a sweat and it was a tough workout.  If you're looking for something new to try at home I recommend this one.  It's really easy to follow, the instructor gives great cues.  It's also just a lot of fun.  It's fast paced and won't bore you.  Now, it's not the kind of workout I get when I do an hour on the elliptical, but it was hard enough that I thought it was worth it.

After working out I sat down to fold laundry. With 6 of us there's always laundry to fold!  I like to watch a movie while I fold clothes.  Today I watched "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead."  It was AWESOME!!  Seriously, loved it.  There's a lot of health documentaries out there that I've watched and I always come away feeling slightly depressed and a little hopeless.  This was NOT the case with "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead."  I had a smile on my face and honestly felt hopeful when it was over.  It was very well made and not only incredibly informative, but also really entertaining.  I highly recommend watching it.  In short, it's about a guy who's fat and overweight and ill and he decides to get healthy by changing his diet.  What happens to him is amazing, but what happens to the people he meets on his journey is pretty incredible too.  Watch it, for real.  You won't be disappointed.

One of the pictures that they showed really stuck with me and I've been thinking about it today.  The picture is of how much space is used up in your stomach from 400 calories of oil, or chicken, or vegetables.  I never saw it presented this way and it really struck me.  You can get completely full on 400 calories of vegetables, but no where near full on 400 calories of oil or meat.  Here's the picture and it's from Dr. Fuhrman's book, Eat to Live.

So, that's my day 2 on the detox in a nutshell.  I'm really happy with how it's going.  I'm definitely hungry and I'm looking forward to being able to eat raw fruits and veggies and brown rice tomorrow.  But, I'm glad I'm doing this.  I think it's going to be worth it.