Water...goooood....soda....bad.....For the water challenge, I simply cut all liquids other than water from my diet. No soda, juice, etc. It was ridiculously hard for me, because I am one of the worst soda-addicts EVER. As in, I have gone days where I only drank soda...nothing else. The first few days I had a killer headache, but after that, the cravings were pretty minimal. I learned to be ok with water. I even learned to like it for the most part. Since the end of the challenge, I have been able to limit soda intake to a much more reasonable, 1-soda-per-day limit. I still drink mostly water.
So with the clean eating challenge, I followed this menu for the first few weeks, then built my own after that. I cut out processed foods almost completely. Absolutely no high fructose corn syrup or weird preservatives. If I couldn't read it or didn't know what it was, I didn't eat it. I monitored calorie intake using an online tracker to ensure that I didn't go way over on food intake, since I'm not used to eating this way. I will say, this was a very difficult challenge. Not because it's hard to find food that fits the criteria, but because it's very difficult to maintain weight while eating full-fat, non-processed foods. It was almost impossible to lose weight with this strategy. I felt great while doing it, but was almost always hungry. Let's just say I was glad when the 30 days was up!
Side Note- The beauty of the clean eating challenge was that I got to try some awesome new recipes...I found some new family favorites and tried several things I have never had before!
The Results- I lost 7 pounds total. I probably lost a few inches as well. Here's a before and after:
