21 Day Fix - Day 8

Here we are at the start of week two. We have both had success and it feels good. Having said that, life sure tries to get in the way of good intentions. Do you ever find that?

I have been watching my oldest daughter have issues at school. She is a strong minded, spirited child, yet she allows one girl to boss her around at school. While watching her play for a bit after school, there was yet another in issue. It's just starting to wear me down. I am tapping out. Obviously I will keep working on this, but man, it's a real esteem deflater. We talked about the issue for the entire drive home. It was exhausting and by the time we arrived home I just wanted a glass of wine! haha! One yellow....The wine is worth one yellow. I still had it to substitute. I made the choice and went for it. Just one.

Next came time to make dinner. I was quickly running out of time. I ended up taking yesterday's soup and giving it a quick puree for a fresh look for tonight's dinner. One red, 2 greens and one yellow.

Then while the kids were getting ready for bed it was time to make lunches. Three of them! That was a lot of chopping! But its done, and there are three healthy, balanced lunches and snacks that will be heading out the door tomorrow. Now I can relax;-)

I have realized that its actually hard to make lunches without absentmindedly snacking while you prepare! Honestly, I didn't even really realize that I do it. I love a system that actually draws my attention to my weaknesses. Makes it so much easier to be aware and make changes. 

Today was challenging but also exciting.

The exciting part about today was that my challenge group officially started. I have these amazing ladies that are joining me for accountability while they do the 21 day fix with me. It's amazing. They are all off to a great start and I love the meal sharing that has started to happen already.

I am so proud of each of them.

Change is hard.

Not making excuses is hard.

Starting is hard.

Taking the first few steps to a lifestyle change is amazing!

21 Days = New habits

I can't wait to see what the next three weeks bring!!

21 Day Fix - Day 7

It's now been a week. I am feeling good. The first two days were a little hard as I worked to give up my boredom eating (which, by the way, I wasn't even aware I was doing!!!). That says something, don't you think?

Today started out crazy. This has nothing to do with the fix, but I will share it anyways. I am fighting a head cold so Jeff intended to let me sleep in this morning. He was up with the girls and I was sound asleep. I woke up abruptly to an extremely large bang, that shock our house. We were having a pretty substantial wind storm and out neighbours car shelter took flight and literally slammed into the side of our house. It hit hard enough to do some damage too. Bam. Good morning. Not a way that I want to wake up again.

The rest of the day was fairly routine balancing out the colour containers throughout the day. We did discover a new way to make breakfast. We always have a shakeology for breakfast. It's my favorite meal of the day. Today we added a full green of spinach into the blender and made the shake. It was delicious! You couldn't taste it at all. In fact it tasted just like a milk shake. Only crazy, and I mean crazy healthy!

The wind and rain continued and I wanted soup. So I chopped celery, carrots and onions and threw it into the crock pot with homemade turkey broth and some left over turkey that I had frozen. I added 1 red on brown rice and walked away.

It was a delicious dinner, 1 red, 1 yellow, 2 green.

The best part is that I am going to freeze the left overs and the next time that I don't feel like making dinner or run out of time, I have a save! Mom score:-)

Oh and so far I have lost 5 pounds and Jeff has lost 10! I'm excited for the week ahead:-)

I am starting another round of this on February 9th and already have some amazing ladies that have committed to joining me. The support is amazing.

21 Day Fix - Day 6

I was super curious about the wine that I drank last night. I kind of figured that it would have put a pound back on me, or just plateaued me a little. So this morning, I decided to do a weigh in. Down a total of 5 pounds! What a great way to start the day.

I am seeing my energy increase now too. It's very encouraging!

I am finding it easier every day to figure out the colours and portions. I can look at a plate and see it in containers now. It's super funny....and helpful! Lol

Most of all I love that this is not a restrictive diet. I am eating real food. I AM NOT getting results by following some unrealistic plan that will sees my results disappear the second I start eating real food again. I do not believe in those diets. I don't even like the word diet.

Dinner tonight was simple. 1 red of shrimp, 1 orange of oil and balsamic dressing and 2 greens of lettuce and mixed raw veggies.

One of the amazing ladies in my challenge group shared a soup recipe with me today that I can't wait to try!!! It might even be tomorrow!

21 Day Fix - Day 5

Today was a good day. No curve balls!

Here are a couple real life reasons why I love the 21 day fix so much:

1) Today is Friday. I wanted a glass of red wine. I can have it!!! Substitute the yellow container for a 4 ounce glass of red! Woot woot. Happy Friday!! 

2) "Nana" offered to watch the girls tonight so that we could go out for dinner. When you have younger kids would you actually turn this down? A date? Not me! So we headed out and didn't even have to wreak our plan. The 21 day fix has restaurant friendly food!!! 

We orderd seafood salads with the dressing on the side. We consumed 2 greens, 2 reds, 1 blue and 1 orange.

What a fabulous way to wrap up the week!

Cheers!

21 Day Fix - Day 4

Today was a bit of a struggle. Nothing major, just a bad Mom day. The baby was up a couple times last night. My five year old was up four times with bad dreams and just to not feel left out, our dog even got me up once!

Fast forward to this morning and I was feeling.....ROUGH! 

All I wanted was a comfort coffee. Morning coffee with.....gunk! Sigh. Settled for honey In My coffee instead and was pleasantly surprised with the taste. Ok, I CAN do this. First hurdle dodged.

I wasn't done there. We ended up running errands unexpectedly and I found myself quite a distance from home, starving and unprepared. As I stared at McDonalds, and even went inside to change the babies diaper I realized the best solution was to go into the grocery store. 

One large banana, one Greek yogurt and a water = 2 purple and 1 red. Golden!

The baby is five months old. She had an off day today;-( dinner was going to be a challenge. I could just tell. So I decided to pull out the slow cooker and see what I could manage to throw in there. 

All I had was a beef tenderloin. I wouldn't use a beef roast next time while doing the fix BUT when you have a crabby baby you do the best you can with what you have.

I threw onions, celery, sweet potatoes and garlic in the button of the slow cooker. Lightly seasoned the roast, seared it to lock in the flavors. Added it to the crock pot (frozen!) and added some water for moisture. At dinner I topped it with onions, cut up some fresh raw peppers and boom, one red, one green, one yellow. Not bad for a hard day.

I am proud that even when things are out of my hands, as today was, I now know that I can still make this work. It's a lifestyle and it's completely doable!!

21 Day Fix - Day 1

My husband and I officially started the 21 day fix today. It was a pretty good day.

My first realization this morning as I started prepping food was, wow, do I ever under eat. No wonder my body is holding on to the padding!!!

We eat pretty well as is, but I am quickly seeing where we make our mistakes. I am so excited to see where we end up at the end of this round. I already know we will complete another 21 days after this.

It's funny that I am actually saying this. I was very reluctant to give this program an honest try before. It seemed to overwhelm me. It must have been mindset, as it's actually pretty easy to follow along! 

I have been busy planning recipes that use the containers to measure. That makes things crazy easy! I can't wait to share these with you!

I just finished prepping lunches for tomorrow. I make Jeff a lunch almost every day for work and it's always the same variation of things. This has opened up a whole new world of items that I can send with him for lunch (and they don't need to be heated up!). I am pumped.

Our baby is finishing having her night time snuggle with me as I type this, then, she will be off to bed for the night, her big sister will follow shortly and then Jeff and I will get our workouts in. What ever works, right?

Day one = total success!!!