Advocare Cleanse Phase RESULTS

Just kidding. I took real pictures!

I wasn’t expecting to see a huge difference in only 10 days, so it is surprising that I can see any difference in the above pictures.

Here are the before and after measurements:

Weight: before – 131.4, after – 130.2 (a note about this, I bought a scale for this, but it is a stupid mini scale, and depending on how I stand on it, it shows me different weights. The first time I stepped on it, it was showing 127, so it’s hard to determine if these numbers are accurate.)

Inches Lost:

chest -- 2 (not where I wanted to lose inches, but beggars can’t be choosers.)

waist -- 3 (woah!)

hips -- 1 (and yet I lost two inches in my chest. unfair.)

right thigh – .75

left thigh -- .5 (they are even now)

Total inches lost: 7.25

The lost inches in only 10 days are kind of amazing to me. I am so excited to see the results after the full 24 days! Bring on the Max Phase!

Advocare 24 Day Challenge Days 8-10

The last few days of the 10 Day Cleanse went pretty smoothly. It was harder to keep from cheating knowing that I was so close to the end.

Day 8

Breakfast: Back to the fiber drinks! Yum! Seriously, though, despite their gross taste, I love the way they make me feel. I didn’t eat breakfast today because I was driving home. I kept thinking I would stop and fix a meal replacement shake, but it didn’t happen.

Lunch: Zucchini noodles with cauliflower alfredo sauce. I added in some salad shrimp and peas. It was super yummy. I also had some hummus and celery.

Snack: Raspberries

Dinner: Dinner was a flop. I was going to make a meal replacement shake with peaches and spinach. It turns out the meal replacement shake does not do well in the blender. It got all frothy and yucky tasting. So then I tried to make eggs, but I added relish and those weren’t very good either.

Day 9

Breakfast: Again, after the fiber drink, I was running late and didn’t have time for breakfast.

Lunch: I was out and about at lunch and had not had any food, so I broke down and bought a sandwich at Target – turkey and brie. I also bought some cheddar bacon mac & cheese chips. Total will-power breakdown. The only redeeming thing was that I only ate half of the sandwich and one serving of chips.

Dinner: My parents made dinner for the boyfriend’s birthday, and it was all of my favorite things: steak, rice casserole, and squash casserole. I tried to keep my portions small, but I did have a buttered dinner roll with it.

Day 10

Breakfast: Meal Replacement Shake. I mixed the vanilla and chocolate together. Yum!

Lunch: I went for a run at lunch, so I wasn’t hungry for awhile after. I ended up eating hard boiled eggs with mustard and hot sauce at around 3:00.

Dinner: Boyfriend birthday dinner part 2. We went to a crawfish restaurant. I had picked out my order online – an order of crawfish and side of steamed broccoli. Except the restaurant didn’t have crawfish, so I had to make a snap (hungry) decision. I got the buffalo shrimp salad. It was kind of terrible. And off-plan. I will say it wasn’t fried, and I didn’t use the dressing, but there was bleu cheese.

I kind of fizzled on my last few days on the plan. Results post tomorrow!

How to Change Your Eating Habits Without Changing Your Friendships

So one of the struggles I’ve had so far during this cleanse is one that I’m sure everybody goes through in some way or another when embarking on a journey to get healthier – social pressure not to change. For me this comes out in two main areas: lunch with coworkers and time at the lake. I can already tell, at the halfway point of the 10 day cleanse, that this is a way I need to continue to eat. If that is going to remain true, I need to figure out a way to navigate potential social pit-falls to healthy eating.

Lunch with Coworkers

I typically eat out with coworkers 2-4 times a week. We have three places we typically like to go – a Greek place, a Mexican restaurant, and a sandwich shop. My coworkers definitely don’t care what I actually order, but it is SO hard to make good decisions while eating out. No matter how good for me it is, I feel like a chump ordering a salad, and paying more for it, than eating the nachos I know I love and that I am used to eating. One solution is definitely to brown-bag my lunch, but then I miss out on bonding with my coworkers. Plus, it’s nice to step away from the office in the middle of the day for a break.

My Solution

This is what has been working for me. Some of you may be able to make the healthy choice at lunch. And that is awesome. And some people may be happy bringing their lunch. Also awesome. I’ve found that for me the best thing is to bring a lunch to work that I can eat at my desk before going with my coworkers out to lunch. If I absolutely can’t resist eating while I’m there, at least I’ll only get a small plate item to pick at instead of a full unhealthy meal.

Time at the Lake

My boyfriend’s family has a lake house and that is my boyfriend’s happy place. He loves to be there on the weekends, and I frequently accompany him. We are there nearly every other weekend in the summer, and at least once a month the rest of the year. Lake culture for his family generally involves doughnuts for breakfast, BBQ sandwiches for lunch, an afternoon of beer drinking, and a late dinner of some sort of grilled meat with Ready Rice or Mac&Cheese and canned green beans. There is also yummy cheesy-carby snack food during the day.

When I first started dating my boyfriend, I ate (and drank) along with everyone else. Over the course of the year we’ve been dating, I’ve slowly cut out the drinking and doughnut breakfasts, but I can’t resist those snacks and dinners! They are yummy! Also, I feel like I am a guest in his family’s home and I feel so grateful that they let me hang around so often and that they are willing to feed me.

During this cleanse, though, it was hard to navigate those snacks and dinners. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by not eating what is being offered and provided to me. At the same time, I spend so much time there that it would be impossible for me to “cheat” every time I am there and still achieve my health goals.

My Solution

This is something I’m still having to figure out. Obviously one solution is to get involved in the food preparation and provide some healthy options. I feel like that is a little tricky to do without stepping on any toes. I definitely think another solution is to recognize that my way of eating now is very different and just because I’ve changed my eating habits doesn’t mean I am judging anyone else’s eating habits. It is ok to have some of those yummy snacks and dinners, as long as I am just having a taste here and there instead of cleaning my plate.

Does anyone have any additional solutions for the above situation? I’d love to hear suggestions!

Advocare 24 Day Challenge: Days 4-7

I did a post about what I ate the first few days, and thought I would continue, if for no other reason than as a reference point for myself for future cleanses. In days 4-7, you don’t have to take the fiber drink in the morning; you add two teeny tiny probiotics pills instead. Definitely a welcome change!

Day 4

• Breakfast: 2 hard-boiled egg yolks mashed with mustard and sriracha, with the whites chopped up and mixed in. This may be my breakfast for the rest of my life. I am in love with this breakfast.
• Lunch: I went to Crossfit during lunch because I had Happy Hour plans for after work. When I got done I had a Meal Replacement Shake (I mixed half of a chocolate pack and half of a vanilla packet together. It was very good) and an apple.
• Dinner: Happy Hour was actually dinner. I had a spinach salad. It came with bacon, but I asked them not to include the bacon. It did have baked goat cheese on top and I did leave that on. Totally worth it!
• After-dinner Snack: I made some homemade hummus for later in the week and had to try it out with some peppers and celery. I’ve been trying to make homemade hummus for YEARS and have never been able to make it taste as creamy and delicious as store-bought. It turns out the secret is a good blender! I bought myself a Vitamix a few months ago and that hummus was AWESOME!

Day 5

• Breakfast: Fail. I was running late and needed to get in to work early, so I skipped breakfast. Which led to . . .
• 1000 calorie lunch: I was so hungry by the time lunch rolled around. I had a big salad with my lemon-tahini dressing; a cup of Weight Watchers summer squash soup; more homemade hummus with carrots and celery; a cup of raspberries/blueberries/blackberries.
• Dinner: My mom was hosting Bunco and invited me to sub. I went off-plan for the night and had the shrimp, crab, and artichoke casserole she made over rice, salad, two pieces of french bread, havarti cheese with crackers, and vanilla icecream for desert. It was good, but man did I feel BAD when I got home later. The casserole had half and half and cheese in it and all of that dairy did NOT agree with my mid-cleanse stomach. Also eating so MUCH food was a problem.

Day 6

• Breakfast: My favorite eggy breakfast!
• Lunch: I was talked into going out to lunch for a coworker that was leaving. It was the same place I had been for happy hour earlier in the week, so I got the spinach salad again. This time I didn’t leave off the bacon. Honestly, I could have done without it, it didn’t make it THAT much better.
• Snack: Homemade hummus with sweet peppers and a carrot
• Dinner: I went to my boyfriend’s parents’ lake house for the weekend. His whole family was there to celebrate his birthday. They had a frozen lasagna prepped for dinner. Luckily his sister was in town and knew I was doing this cleanse, so she prepped some awesome veggie side dishes. We had eggplant, tomatoes, and kale chips. I had a tiny piece of the lasagna because the rest of his family was sort of pressuring me to eat it, and I was a guest in their home, so I didn’t want to be rude. This was a tough situation that I had to finagle all weekend.

Day 7

• Breakfast: Still at the lake, but I brought my hard-boiled eggs with me!
• Lunch: Tuna salad with chickpeas and herbs
• Snack: My boyfriend’s sister made her awesome guacemole. I chopped up some carrots so I could eat some (mostly) guilt-free. Dinner was suuuper late, so I had some cashews and almonds around my normal dinner time
• Dinner: The planned dinner was porkchops with canned green beans and corn on the cob with lime butter. I had a few bites of my boyfriend’s porkchop and half of an ear of corn (I did not pass up that lime butter). I was given somewhat of a hard time again, but I felt like I was eating enough to not be rude. I loaded up on the green beans and a tomato/onion/cucumber salad his sister had made. There was cookie cake for birthday celebration desert, but I’m not much of a sweets eater, so it wasn’t a big deal to pass this up. (Not to be snobby, but the fact that it was grocery store cookie cake as opposed to Great American Cookie Company helped make the decision easier!)

Thoughts on days 4-7: These days were a little harder to navigate. I had social obligations that I didn’t want to miss out on. At the same time I didn’t want to alienate anyone but sticking so rigidly to my cleanse that I couldn’t enjoy time with friends and family. I think I will do a follow-up post on this issue later. Back to the fiber drink tomorrow!