And I'm back.
I'm so happy I participated in this challenge! It gave me so much encouragement, and showed me some very telling patterns I fall into that, once analyzed and reversed, should help me move forward a lot better. I'd like to share some of them here, in the hopes that they'll benefit someone else as well.
Recap: I participated in a clean eating challenge during November. It was 3 weeks of non-processed foods, and it was really challenging. We didn't have a rule about the number of ingredients a food had, instead we rated the quality of ingredients. For example, you could still eat certain tortilla chips and salsas, because even though they contained 10 or so ingredients, all the ingredients were clean. But I couldn't eat basically every cereal I love, even the ones with only 5 ingredients, because all contain maltodextrin or soy lecethin, both of which are heavily processed and yucky. So what happened is I ate a LOT of fruits and vegetables, good protein with every meal, and stayed away from the sugary stuff that's been keeping my baby weight on me (mostly cereal and graham crackers).
The first week I lost 4 lbs. 4 lbs! I used myfitnesspal to track my calories, and I was super strict about it. I stayed under 1300 calories every day that week, and I don't think I cheated on the clean diet at all. I also did exercise a little bit, a few sessions of Zumba, and pilates almost every day. Great week! Great start!
The second week I lost 2 lbs. I could chalk it up to a plateau, but I experienced it, so I know what actually happened. Which, honestly, is a really good excuse. My baby has been super small since the day she was born, and I've always been concerned about my supply. I thought that cutting calories may have been affecting my supply, so I stopped counting this week. I also got super busy with Christmas preparations (hey, all my shopping was done before December!) and family stuff, plus I think this was the week I caught the stomach bug, so I didn't exercise as much. So there you go.
The last week I lost 1 lb. Hannah got sick along with me, and if she's not happy, I'm holding her all day long, so no exercise. I also got addicted to a new TV show on Netflix (Gilmore Girls...), so that gave me a good excuse to knit at night instead of exercising, so I'm pretty sure I only did pilates once if at all this week. As far as eating...I was REALLY craving ice cream, so I kept eating really sugary fruits to keep me away from the stuff. Even though it's fruit, and it's got all the fiber in it, it's still sugar, and sugar goes to the hips if you don't do your Zumba.
What I learned:
Calorie counting is essential to staying on track with good eating habits. Even if you think you know what foods are good, unless sit back and look at what you ate all day at the end of it, you won't realize the amounts. It's easy to dish up that second helping when you don't have to note it. I had my phone out at every meal, deciding what and how much of everything to eat, budgeting my calories for the entire day so I'd always have extra at the end to make sure I didn't go over at dinner time. If you're not constantly doing this, you won't keep diligent track like that, and you'll notice in your (lack of) weight-loss.
I tend to eat really fatty proteins when I try to include it in every meal like I should. I noticed this after just 3 days on this diet, and so I decided to try out one of those protein powders to see if that would cut out some of the fat from my protein consumption. It totally did. Instead of eating cheese or almonds or peanut butter or sausage, I would have a protein shake with toast and it would keep me full for almost two meals.
Another thought on fatty proteins - we did some research after this was over (after Thanksgiving, actually) and determined that tilapia and turkey are the leanest meats you can eat.
A good diet and exercise go hand-in-hand. My favorite part about myfitnesspal is when you enter the exercise you did that day and it gives you more calories you can eat! And that doesn't mean you should not eat those calories - eat them! You earned them, and your body needs the fuel after all that burning. Plus, the one motivates the other. When I wake up early and do a workout, all I want for breakfast is good lean protein, and that determines the rest of my day. When I sleep in, all I want is a bowl of sugary cereal, which then makes me want to just watch TV all day, rather than motivating me to do a workout later. If you make exercise happen, you'll want to eat right. If you make eating right happen, you'll want to exercise.
To sum up, I love this clean eating concept, and I think it can be a great stepping stone in a weight-loss journey. Even if all you do is eliminate SOME things you eat daily that are processed, you'll see results. When you eat a processed food with those chemical ingredients you can't pronounce, you're putting toxins into your body. The minute you stop putting those toxins in your body, your body can start trying to flush them out. Now that this challenge is over, I obviously went back to eating some crap foods because Thanksgiving. I put on 2 lbs during the week of Thanksgiving, but to be fair I also celebrated my wedding anniversary that weekend, which involved a fair amount of eating out and treats. But one thing I've committed to do is eat 2 breakfasts a week that are NOT cereal (I'm a cold cereal junkie), and it makes a difference. I also don't feel like eating processed foods. When I'm feeling snackish, I grab some almonds or dates or carrots, rather than reaching for those addicting crackers. So it's making a difference in that way as well.
"All right, all right, enough already lady, where are the results?" Amirite? Here they are.
Starting
Weight: 147
Waist: 31.5"
Hips: 41"
Arms: 11"
Thighs: 21.5"
Ending
Weight: 140
Waist: 30"
Hips: 38"
Arms: 11"
Thighs: 20.5"
I'm attributing the inches lost to two things: my workouts, and the fact that I may or may not have been measuring in the same place both times. I tried to find the biggest part of each body part to measure, but I had a panic attack when I did the second set because I honestly couldn't remember. Anyway, I lost inches in my hips and thighs because I was doing a lot of squats and pilates. I didn't lose anything in my arms because I didn't do any arm workouts at all.
Now, I intended to post before/after pics, and you know I took the before pics. Well, my 5 yr old learned how to delete pics off of my phone between the time I took the after pics and the time I actually uploaded them to the computer, so...I only have the front view, and it doesn't show much change. I think the inches lost speak for themselves more than the pictures would, because it was only 7 lbs.
So that was my experience eating clean for 3 weeks, and I loved it. I still have a good 10 lbs of baby weight to lose, so I'm planning to do this jump start again after the new year. One thing that really helped me this time was the accountability of the group dynamic, as well as the support and help offered there. We reported everything we ate at the end of the day, which kept us both honest and motivated, and we posted clean recipes to give ideas to others. We also had a clean-eating expert who helped answer all our questions about clean ingredients. I'd really like to do the same thing this time around, which means I need friends! Please let me know if you'd like to join our group for this challenge.
I'm so happy I participated in this challenge! It gave me so much encouragement, and showed me some very telling patterns I fall into that, once analyzed and reversed, should help me move forward a lot better. I'd like to share some of them here, in the hopes that they'll benefit someone else as well.
Recap: I participated in a clean eating challenge during November. It was 3 weeks of non-processed foods, and it was really challenging. We didn't have a rule about the number of ingredients a food had, instead we rated the quality of ingredients. For example, you could still eat certain tortilla chips and salsas, because even though they contained 10 or so ingredients, all the ingredients were clean. But I couldn't eat basically every cereal I love, even the ones with only 5 ingredients, because all contain maltodextrin or soy lecethin, both of which are heavily processed and yucky. So what happened is I ate a LOT of fruits and vegetables, good protein with every meal, and stayed away from the sugary stuff that's been keeping my baby weight on me (mostly cereal and graham crackers).
The first week I lost 4 lbs. 4 lbs! I used myfitnesspal to track my calories, and I was super strict about it. I stayed under 1300 calories every day that week, and I don't think I cheated on the clean diet at all. I also did exercise a little bit, a few sessions of Zumba, and pilates almost every day. Great week! Great start!
The second week I lost 2 lbs. I could chalk it up to a plateau, but I experienced it, so I know what actually happened. Which, honestly, is a really good excuse. My baby has been super small since the day she was born, and I've always been concerned about my supply. I thought that cutting calories may have been affecting my supply, so I stopped counting this week. I also got super busy with Christmas preparations (hey, all my shopping was done before December!) and family stuff, plus I think this was the week I caught the stomach bug, so I didn't exercise as much. So there you go.
The last week I lost 1 lb. Hannah got sick along with me, and if she's not happy, I'm holding her all day long, so no exercise. I also got addicted to a new TV show on Netflix (Gilmore Girls...), so that gave me a good excuse to knit at night instead of exercising, so I'm pretty sure I only did pilates once if at all this week. As far as eating...I was REALLY craving ice cream, so I kept eating really sugary fruits to keep me away from the stuff. Even though it's fruit, and it's got all the fiber in it, it's still sugar, and sugar goes to the hips if you don't do your Zumba.
What I learned:
Calorie counting is essential to staying on track with good eating habits. Even if you think you know what foods are good, unless sit back and look at what you ate all day at the end of it, you won't realize the amounts. It's easy to dish up that second helping when you don't have to note it. I had my phone out at every meal, deciding what and how much of everything to eat, budgeting my calories for the entire day so I'd always have extra at the end to make sure I didn't go over at dinner time. If you're not constantly doing this, you won't keep diligent track like that, and you'll notice in your (lack of) weight-loss.
I tend to eat really fatty proteins when I try to include it in every meal like I should. I noticed this after just 3 days on this diet, and so I decided to try out one of those protein powders to see if that would cut out some of the fat from my protein consumption. It totally did. Instead of eating cheese or almonds or peanut butter or sausage, I would have a protein shake with toast and it would keep me full for almost two meals.
Another thought on fatty proteins - we did some research after this was over (after Thanksgiving, actually) and determined that tilapia and turkey are the leanest meats you can eat.
A good diet and exercise go hand-in-hand. My favorite part about myfitnesspal is when you enter the exercise you did that day and it gives you more calories you can eat! And that doesn't mean you should not eat those calories - eat them! You earned them, and your body needs the fuel after all that burning. Plus, the one motivates the other. When I wake up early and do a workout, all I want for breakfast is good lean protein, and that determines the rest of my day. When I sleep in, all I want is a bowl of sugary cereal, which then makes me want to just watch TV all day, rather than motivating me to do a workout later. If you make exercise happen, you'll want to eat right. If you make eating right happen, you'll want to exercise.
To sum up, I love this clean eating concept, and I think it can be a great stepping stone in a weight-loss journey. Even if all you do is eliminate SOME things you eat daily that are processed, you'll see results. When you eat a processed food with those chemical ingredients you can't pronounce, you're putting toxins into your body. The minute you stop putting those toxins in your body, your body can start trying to flush them out. Now that this challenge is over, I obviously went back to eating some crap foods because Thanksgiving. I put on 2 lbs during the week of Thanksgiving, but to be fair I also celebrated my wedding anniversary that weekend, which involved a fair amount of eating out and treats. But one thing I've committed to do is eat 2 breakfasts a week that are NOT cereal (I'm a cold cereal junkie), and it makes a difference. I also don't feel like eating processed foods. When I'm feeling snackish, I grab some almonds or dates or carrots, rather than reaching for those addicting crackers. So it's making a difference in that way as well.
"All right, all right, enough already lady, where are the results?" Amirite? Here they are.
Starting
Weight: 147
Waist: 31.5"
Hips: 41"
Arms: 11"
Thighs: 21.5"
Ending
Weight: 140
Waist: 30"
Hips: 38"
Arms: 11"
Thighs: 20.5"
I'm attributing the inches lost to two things: my workouts, and the fact that I may or may not have been measuring in the same place both times. I tried to find the biggest part of each body part to measure, but I had a panic attack when I did the second set because I honestly couldn't remember. Anyway, I lost inches in my hips and thighs because I was doing a lot of squats and pilates. I didn't lose anything in my arms because I didn't do any arm workouts at all.
Now, I intended to post before/after pics, and you know I took the before pics. Well, my 5 yr old learned how to delete pics off of my phone between the time I took the after pics and the time I actually uploaded them to the computer, so...I only have the front view, and it doesn't show much change. I think the inches lost speak for themselves more than the pictures would, because it was only 7 lbs.
So that was my experience eating clean for 3 weeks, and I loved it. I still have a good 10 lbs of baby weight to lose, so I'm planning to do this jump start again after the new year. One thing that really helped me this time was the accountability of the group dynamic, as well as the support and help offered there. We reported everything we ate at the end of the day, which kept us both honest and motivated, and we posted clean recipes to give ideas to others. We also had a clean-eating expert who helped answer all our questions about clean ingredients. I'd really like to do the same thing this time around, which means I need friends! Please let me know if you'd like to join our group for this challenge.
