Obviously, someone took a break over the holidays. Not naming names, but you know who you are! ;) Or rather, you probably know WHO it is! ME. Yep, I COMPLETELY got off track. Though I got derailed with working out regularly around October, from that point on I had moved on to avoiding refined sugar. ... until approximately Christmas. Ah, yes. The Christmas candy, the goodies, the eggnog and all the sugar-laden, poisonous 'bad' foods (that all taste so good) that inevitably come with the holiday. SIGH. I admit it. I was weak. I let myself slip.
So, the white poison made its way back into my body. I have no one to blame but myself. No one forced me to consume it. .. I did it all on my own, thank you very much. At first I'm pretty sure I was firmly in denial - 'Oh, this little bit won't hurt me - I'm on a break, I'll get back on track right away'.
OOOOPS, sorry. A month later, I'm still struggling to get back off of the stuff! I don't even know how to explain how insidiously it has worked its way back into me and made it so difficult to 'kick' again, but here it is and here I am - and I don't like it one bit! I feel bloated and fat and just, well. .. .. .yukky about myself.
So today comes the first day of a new (but not entirely new) way of eating and lifestyle change.. .... Clean Eating. Some of you may have heard of it and others may not. ... but I'm here to tell you it's some powerful good stuff.
Here's the deal. For my first round of P90X I was clueless about sugar and the harmful effects it was obviously having on my ability to lean up. The simple fact is. ... . this craptastic anti-nutrient keeps the body from utilizing (aka: burning) stored fat for energy when you work out. FUN, huh?! So all that huffing and puffing and bringing it and hopes and dreams about looking better.. ..are all for naught if you're still consuming too much (or any, for some of us) of the white poison. It wasn't until my first round was done and I saw a disappointing lack of major changes that I somehow (hallelujah!) discovered the horrors of refined sugar and how awful (yes, truly awful!!) it is. My eyes were open - I cut refined and added sugars out of my diet and read labels and ......... dropped 9 lbs of bloat in 8 days! How's that for powerful?!
So there was that, which was great. P90X had opened my eyes to food as fuel, and quality foods to fuel the body, and then I discovered the sugar thing. Thinking back, from time to time the thought had occurred to me. .....why not just eat all natural foods and only those kinds of foods and see what happens? It HAD to be healthy, right? I couldn't even say exactly what led me to think that, other than the absorbing and filtering of years of information about healthy diets and the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and nutrients that are found in vegetables and fruits and whole grains and well, NATURAL foods. Up until P90X, my diet hadn't ever really been too much of any one thing (except lazy and inconsistent and downright bad at times!) and I hadn't really felt the effects of eating good and eating for fuel versus eating to eat. That's not to say I didn't know somewhere, deep down, that I could improve upon my diet by a lot. .. . but I had never done it consistently for any length of time.
So hallelujah, it all makes sense now. Really! On a Christmas visit I saw a copy of Oxygen magazine, and thumbed through it a little. My attention got hooked on a little something mentioned in one of the articles about "Eating Clean", a way of eating and also a book.... .I remember trying to commit the name of the author to memory. .. Tosca Reno. Not a usual name, so I was able to remember it. Then a week later while doing a little shopping I happened to be in the health and fitness section of books... .and there it was. "The Eat Clean Diet - Recharged!" by Tosca Reno. I bought it, of course. But in the midst of my other reading and activities I didn't get too far into it for a while. But the idea of it stuck in my head. ... Here I've been struggling the last few weeks with starting another round of P90X and fighting yo-yo'ing motivation again (sooooo frustrating) and also fighting the constant battle of resisting the white poison. Just when I thought my mind was on track to cut it out again, I would feel sluggish and lazy and unmotivated and slip up - and be eating something I knew I shouldn't be. One day good; the next bad. Frustration was setting in. Again. And again. And again! I was getting pretty fed up with myself and my inability to just take the bull by the horns and just get it DONE! What was wrong with me? I had done it before hadn't I? and it really hadn't been hard! What was the deal this time?
So this past weekend, amid my self-labeled 'last hurrah weekend' with sugar and snacking when I wanted to (which doesn't end up being a ton for me - I'm not a true binge eater, thankfully) I really sat down and read the book. And I looked at the website and the success stories. Turns out this gal is awfully popular! And she's definitely onto something.. .. . . 80% of the the battle for a healthy, slim physique is nutrition. 10% exercise, and 10% genetics. The biggest chunk of that battle is COMPLETELY within my power!! So I gotta tell ya. .. . I finally feel that I'm ready to be back on track. For real. This Clean Eating thing has got me excited, motivated, determined, and ready to commit.
What the heck do I have to lose?! FAT. Toxic fat and toxic buildup in my body from the poison I've consumed.
What do I have to gain? Health, vitality, getting lean, energy!
Gee, tough decision, right? A whole lot to gain AND a whole lot to lose as well - but losing in a wonderfully good way.
So I'm fired up!! This isn't a 'diet' in that it is not a 'temporary' way of being. ... . it's a lasting, permanent change. A change in thinking, in viewing what I put into my body, a change in patterns and HABITS and viewpoints. All this time I've been struggling, it's like the truth has been slowly but surely sinking in... . what IS the good in eating the crap I've been eating? It's a SHORT, SHORT-LIVED satisfaction, tempered by guilt and frustration a millisecond after it passes my lips. What, then, is the point of it?! Seems there's more negative than positive - and giving in certainly isn't getting me anywhere at all. It's not helping my health, my body, my weight, my overall outlook on my appearance. It's sucking the life out of me and depositing globs of disgusting, toxic fat in all the places I hate already..... WHY would I want to do that to myself?!
I DON'T. So there. Time for a revolution!!
1/31/11: Day 1 of Eating Clean has gone GREAT so far!! I am FIRED UP. No loss in energy. It's like my body eats this stuff up (literally as well as figuratively) and is telling me THANK YOU, for not poisoning me anymore. :)
So for anyone who is curious, this has been the menu so far today... . .clean, nutrient rich foods and lean proteins. And ALWAYS combining complex carbs with lean protein.... .
Breakfast: 2 scoops Chocolate whey protein powder (very low sugar content) in water
MidMorning: 1 slice Ezekhial bread with sugar free/natural peanut butter, 1 small apple and sf PB, water
Lunch: chicken breast with spinach (2 servings of spinach) and grape tomatoes, water (wow, hello full)
Mid Afternoon: 1/2 c oatmeal (old fashioned oats), apple, boiled egg, water (not even hungry again but now I'm full again)
And. .. that's all I've got so far for today. Dinner will most likely be Talapia or maybe shrimp and a potato (gotta find me some sweet potatoes - yum!) with more green veggies. ..... and of course, water. :)
One thing that sticks in my head about this way of eating is this; (paraphrasing) you will lose weight eating as much as you can eat of clean, nutrient-rich calories from natural clean foods - while you can easily gain weight eating LESS calories of anti-nutrient, empty and processed foods. How's that for boggling your mind? Yet it MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!!
I hope this will be helpful for someone who may be striving to make a healthy change in their lives, both for health and physique (my motivation for doing it is both of those, of course). I highly recommend checking out Tosca Reno's website: http://www.eatcleandiet.com/ and all of her books too! The woman is on to something. . .. .
Til next time... . happy Clean Eating!
