After the Cleanse: What Now?

For the past 10 days (from October 17-27), I have been participating in a 10-Day Cleanse along with some of my girlfriends. The main point of the cleanse was to drop bad habits, and to realize that I really need to get my portion sizes in check. (Not to mention, to get back on the exercise train!)

Well, it's officially day 10 of the challenge, and I thought I'd share some of my goals, failures and successes from the past 10 days.

Goals

The main focus of this challenge was to learn to eat "clean", drink more water, get more active, and get more sleep!! Also, to cut out sweets, pop, and artificial sweeteners.

Failures

Diet:
The day before we started, I thought I'd do myself a favor and make a delicious, healthy potato soup, chock full of veggies and nutrients. However, after reading through the list on Day 2 for this challenge, I realized that potatoes were "no-no"s, and had to make Mark finish the rest of it. (Sorry, honey!)

On Day 7, I splurged. A LOT. In all fairness, the first splurge wasn't until after lunch, when I had a piece of my own birthday cake and a small scoop of ice cream. However, my diet went seriously downhill when we decided to meet our friends, Jed and Kris at a local sports bar for supper. I figured I could just order some celery and a big salad, but when we got there, all they had to order were breaded and fried appetizers and pizza. Complete fail! Mark ordered some wings and we ordered a "Shed" pizza (a.k.a. The Works). The only plus for this meal was that the pizza was on thin crust, and it had a few veggies on it. This day, even after a breakfast and lunch coming in at under 800 calories, I dumped on another 1200 with supper alone.

Exercise:
I'd have to say that the biggest failure would be finding time to exercise. And this one worries me! Of course, on the beautiful, sunny, warm, welcoming days, a 5-mile walk was the first thing I WANTED to do after work. But with the frigid front that came through on Days 8-10, it's the furthest thing from my mind! Out of the 10 days, I did planned cardio 7 of the days, and I didn't specifically do any strength training. At all! But I kinda figured that my 4 days of the 30 Day Shred with Jillian counted somewhat for the strength training.

Successes

Honestly? Everything else! I'm not always the first person to pat myself on the back when I do something well, but I did this very well!!

I didn't miss a day drinking at least 80 fl oz water, exercised 7/10 days, kept under my calorie goal of 1550 for 8 of the 10 days, and got plenty of sleep. I also cut out snacking, processed food, starchy white foods, and soda. (Technically, alcohol too, but I'm not really so much of a drinker to begin with, so that wasn't a tough challenge). I ate way more raw foods, recorded every bite on sparkpeople.com, learned how to snack right, realized that my "achilles heel" is snacking and mindless eating.

So Where Do I Go From Here?

Well, I'm not going to pretend that I didn't take a day off and eat what I wanted today, but shoot - it's my 29th birthday, and quite frankly, I'm giving that to myself :) But starting tomorrow, I'm gonna keep with this!

The next step in this is to join my girls in a "Hottie for the Holidays" challenge, in which we set a goal to reach our goals BY New Years' instead of setting our goals AFTER New Years'.

So what are my goals?

Well, I hate to do the goal thing - especially when pounds are concerned - because for some reason numbers just really mess with my head. If I had to throw a number out there, I'd say 170. I'd love to be steady at 170 and just stay there forever. But realistically, that's talking 14 pounds in 2 months, and quite frankly, I'm not comfortable pushing myself that far.

So really? I'd love to just continue what I'm doing and see where I go from here. I want to definitely exercise - even just a little bit - every day. Not obsess over it like I have before, but just do SOMETHING.

I also want to keep with this new bedtime - where we're SLEEPING by 10:30pm instead of just getting ready for bed.

I think I need to permanently kiss pop goodbye, and while I'm not going to say I'm not going to eat potatoes anymore, I'm going to try to work more whole grains into my day, and stop it with all the little extras that I said goodbye to (i.e. butter, sour cream, salt and pepper, creamy dressings, etc.). Oh, and continue drinking a TON of water!!!

I fully realize that I'm probably not going to be dropping weight like I did during the 10 day cleanse (7 lbs in 10 days is pretty abnormal). I need to keep that in mind so as not to get overwhelmed when I don't see the same type of results right away.

But now, I leave you with my Day 1 (191.6 lbs) vs. Day 10(184.2 lbs) pics :)