I am now 22 days into my 90 Day Challenge to lose 15 pounds. I am already down 7 lbs! It has been three weeks, and I feel absolutely amazing! Let me tell you what I'm doing. :)
This is my typical menu for a day:
Breakfast: Protein shake with fruit.
Morning Snack: Couple pieces of fruit, or fruit with string cheese.
Lunch: Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, or Smart One with a small dinner salad.
Afternoon Snack: Piece of fruit with pretzels.
Dinner: Protein shake with fruit, and sometimes a small dinner salad, too.
Evening Snack: Homemade portioned popcorn or Jello's Sugar Free-Fat Free Pudding with fresh fruit.
As far as my exercise goes, here's a list of things I do on a pretty regular basis for the past three weeks:
Walk 2 miles at least 4 times a week
20 minute Yoga sessions at least 3 times a week
Approximately 20 minutes of activity on Wii Fit Plus
Naturally, my exercise also includes normal, everyday things like the following:
Walking the dog at least 4 times a day (that's up and down three flights of stairs EACH time!!)
Cleaning the house
Laundry
Cooking and Baking
I allow myself a little treat on the weekends. I also don't drink my protein shakes on the weekends, either. This is so that I can practice making homemade meals that are healthier for me and my husband, and practice portion control, which is the number one reason I believe so many American are overweight. My husband and I enjoy traditional breakfasts on Sundays with hashbrowns, eggs, biscuits, and usually sausage, but we've also enjoyed bacon or pieces of ham. We get special snacks that we normally wouldn't allow ourselves to indulge in during the week, like tortilla chips and salsa, or spinach dip and potato rolls. Our Saturday dinners are also usually more fatty than that of those that we eat during the week. It is usually things like chicken wings and french fries, or homemade pizza.
As you can see from the menu above, we've also adapted a more European way of eating, where we eat our larger meal (what would be dinner in the US) for our lunch, and we eat our lunch size meal at dinnertime. This allows for our bodies to work off our largest meal of the day, instead of hoarding all the calories and fat in that meal and piling it away in our hips and thighs.
I have also begun cutting things out of my diet...FOR GOOD!! High fructose corn syrup was the first thing to go! I will be doing a blog entry on HFCS coming up soon, so stay tuned for that! Bottom line? That stuff is poison!! I have gone three weeks without any of that in the food I eat, and let me tell you, I feel healthier with every bite! Yes, it takes work to check every single label on the foods you eat to make sure that you are not indulging in that toxin. But it is worth it! Yes, HFCS is in practically EVERYTHING!! You MUST read the labels to find it. And once you see it in the list of ingredients, just put the product back on the shelf and keep moving! Your body will thank you, so will your metabolism! I challenge you to try it for a week. You will find that you can do without many things that you will find HFCS in. I know I have changed a lot of what I eat just to cut that one ingredient out of my diet. But you will never believe how amazing you feel!
I will be honest, this is hard work. It takes an effort to wake up every day and be motivated to get up and workout, or to stay steady on the menu. There are days that I will fight to do my workouts, and days where a protein shake or piece of fruit are the last things that I want to be putting into my body. But this is all working toward something that I desperately need to do for myself. I do not do this to be thin. I am doing this to be healthy. Being thin is just the added bonus to changing my lifestyle.
