5 Day Jumpstart

May is halfway through and wow, it truly feels like it has flown by.  I've been at my new job for 6 weeks...and I have lost less than 4 pounds in two months.

SO.  Time to change something up.  Time to do something drastic.

Not starve myself or take laxatives drastic.

Not cut out all happy foods drastic.

I'm goal oriented.  Not crazy. :)

So instead I'm going to do a 5-day food cleanse.  It should help flush my system of the impurities I've probably built up growing a bit lax with my eating over the past few months.  And it should jump start my metabolism into the right direction.  Operative term being *should.*

***Note*** I did do a different kind of cleanse with "all natural vitamins" last year that almost ended with me in the ER.  It was going well and you're supposed to increase the dosage as you go along, but the day I took 6 pills I think my body was already empty.  Talk about PAIN.  Never again for me...

Anyway, back to it...

I found the cleanse in my monthly issue of Health magazine.  I searched their website and could not find it completely spelled out to put a link here, so I'll give you the main components of it below.  If it works well I'll republish it with exact measurements and recipes.

Breakfast:  Banana Smoothie (1 banana, milk and ice blended together).
Lunch: Spinach salad with goat cheese, pecans and pomegranate dressing (pomegranate juice, olive oil and dijon mustard)
Snack: plain Greek yogurt with rolled oats and honey.
Dinner: black bean, chicken and avocado whole grain wrap with brown rice, tomatoes and shredded carrot.
Drink: 2 quarts of green tea each day (adding sliced lemon, lime and orange).  I plan to drink this along with my normal water intake.

The funny thing is I would eat any of these things independently (and love the salad dressing recipe btw).  So this isn't going to be too terribly tough for me this week.  I'm sure by Friday I will be "over it" but I do tend to eat the same things at least for breakfasts, lunches and snacks.  It is dinner time that will be hard.

I've already figured out what Stephen and Elizabeth will eat for dinner this week.  I'm making spaghetti one night (already have the sauce frozen), that should last them two nights, then there are leftover grilled hotdogs (all beef) from tonight, and Stephen will make hamburgers for them another night, as well as breakfast for dinner on that last night.

So I spent some time this afternoon preparing my meals for the week except the banana smoothie.  I plan to make that fresh every morning - but I had to buy a blender today as I did not own one!  (I know - gasp!).  I'm excited about being able to make smoothies and hope to continue that trend with summer approaching.

Back to my prep - we grilled the chicken, diced it, and I cooked the brown rice (2 batches because I burned the first batch in the microwave - not sure how, because I am following the instructions - its crazy!), drained the black beans and diced tomatoes, then combined it all with the recommended seasonings.  Also got my salads together for 4 of the 5 days.  Tuesday I have a lunch date but fortunately I picked the restaurant this time and it has a salad VERY similar to the one I will be eating each day.  Then I put together my greek yogurt combo and am just hoping I don't rush off to work and forget my lunch one day.

I'm preparing to get picked on tomorrow when I don't order lunch out (we have a day long meeting once a month and have lunch catered in) but I don't care.

Reminds me of one of Dave Ramsey's mottos - "Live like no one else so you can live like no one else."

My healthy lifestyle has had to be different from everyone else.  Mainly because many people eat unhealthily - and not necessarily on purpose, they just might not know better.

And I haven't allowed that to derail me up to this point.

I can do just about anything for 5 days.  So while this might have me a little grumpy, I'm hoping to see the jump start on my weight loss that I'd like.  I weighed in at 199.6 the other day, a few pounds up from my low of 196.4.  I'd like to get down to 195 with this cleanse, which happens to be taking place the week I normally lose a chunk anyway.  SO, that should be attainable.

We'll see! I'll be checking in to let you know how I'm doing.  I will probably need to be blogging every day this week to keep myself from my marshmallows and dark chocolate. 

I am excited!!!!!  Can you tell??? 

Talk to you soon.

~Clara