21-Day Clean Up: Made it through Valentines Day and a Shower!

So our first week went very well. We had plenty of leftovers and vegetables to grab and go and were never without something good at our fingertips. We’ve been down this road before so our routine is pretty well established. Honestly the hardest part for me is having plain coffee in the morning but I have gotten used to it.

Cori and I are both exercising regularly, I see the chiropractor and Cori goes to physical therapy and had a massage. We are putting our body’s needs first during this clean up. I’m feeling more energy and mental clarity this week. I’ve found that I don’t crave the mid afternoon coffee that I used to. I still get a little tired mid afternoon but it feels milder. The bumps on my face are going away rapidly and I suspected they were from sugar and I think I was right.

Valentine’s day was tough with lots of chocolate floating around the workplace and friends offering donuts and sweets! But we both managed to resist and had some fresh strawberries for desert and we handmade our Valentine’s Day cards this year and had lots of fun.

It felt so much better to celebrate simply than sit over a box of chocolate and feel yucky after eating a few too many. Plus the box would linger for days, which means eating chocolate every night for as long as the box would last. It seems like there has always been something to "pick at" since the holidays and the Super Bowl! This constant picking increases daily sugar and carb cravings because the brain wants more and more sugar. This is exactly how belly weight happens! So, we are feeling pretty good about things so far.

We also made it through my niece’s baby shower this weekend! Luckily there was gluten free pizza and a beautiful salad, so apart from cheese and some extra carbs with the crust, we did pretty good. It took mutual support and a few “don’t do it’s!” but we were even able to skip the dessert table with cake and cookies. We opted for a glass of red wine instead and enjoyed time with family. Were it not for our commitment to our clean up, we both would have hit the dessert table. Hard.

So we made it through Valentine’s Day, a shower and a weekend without going too far off the rails. This week we’ve got butternut squash soup, salads with chicken for lunches and lean proteins and lots of veggies for dinner, brown rice or potatoes for starch/carbs. Nuts, fruit, olives, hummus and guacamole for snacking.

Onward!