21-Day Fix: 1 Day Down, 20 More To Go...

Well friends, the first day is in the books! Here’s how it went…

DAY 1 WORKOUT: CARDIO FIX

Hardest 30 minutes of my life. Guess that’s expected on Day 1. But, despite being out of breath and throwing up afterward (gross- think I overdid it a bit), I really liked the workout. It was broken down into 60 second rounds, with 20 seconds rest/water break in between. Much better than p90x which hardly gives you any time to get water unless you hit pause. Although, I did have to pause it once for a bathroom break, because post-baby bladder + 40 ounces of water + jumping jacks = well, you can do the math J

Also, Autumn, the instructor was awesome. She clearly explained and demonstrated each move with 2 variations based on ability. She was also very encouraging, continually motivating you to push through it and if you feel like quitting, to remind yourself of your goals and why you ordered this program in the first place... The only person you hurt by quitting is yourself.

DAY 1: FOOD REVIEW

Coffee Drama.

I knew this would be a problem. I’m very particular about my coffee. Trying to get the right taste. Don’t like adding nonfat milk to it (waters it down in my opinion) and the stevia I put it in today gave it a funny artificial taste- not a fan. I need to get this coffee thing figured out. I know you can add coffee to shakeology to make a mocha of sorts so that might be a viable option for me…

Charting.

As I said before, I love charts. I’m a visual person, so I wanted to come up with a way to visually depict what I need to consume every day. The book provides “tally charts” that you can make copies of and fill in each day as you go. But, me being the planner that I am, I wanted a way to map everything out in advance. I would rather know ahead of time what I can eat at a given moment versus just eating whatever throughout the day, then getting to the end of the day and not being able to put together a meal because I don’t have certain colors left.

So after a trip to Dollar Tree, I created a giant, custom chart (well two charts-one for me and one for Josh since we have different portion amounts based on target calorie needs). Each colored square represents a food from the corresponding color container that I can eat each day. Even Anniston was excited to help- she has recently learned almost all her colors so she was so excited about the colored squares on the chart.

Anyways, I started by planning our dinners for the week, considering that’s the meal that our family shares together. After breaking-down what goes into each dinner, I then could visually see what food options I had left for the other times of the day, and build my meals/snacks around that. This is particularly helpful preparing for special events as well. For instance, this Thursday, Anniston has a birthday party at a Fro-Yo place. I was planning to get some plain tart yogurt with fruit and nuts, so I filled in those colors in the “snack” category.         

What I Ate

The container portions are more filling than expected. Along with some egg whites and hot sauce, I ate a purple container of strawberries with my breakfast. And, despite my daughter eating some too (which she calls “straw puppies”), I still felt full.

The breakfast kept me full through the duration of my workout and then I had shakeology afterward for lunch. For the first taste, I wanted to try it plain, just mixed with water and unsweetened almond milk (which counts as a sub for one of my yellow containers) instead of a fancy recipe, to get an idea of its basic flavor. It was better than I expected. Very sweet and chocolaty. The texture was a little gritty and I think it would have been better if the water was super cold. Many of the recipes suggest using a blender and combining with ice (I just used the provided shaker this time), and I think that would resolve both the texture and temperature issue. But, if in a hurry or on the go (or at work, like Josh), the scoop with water in the shaker is still very pleasant. It didn’t look like a lot to drink, but I felt full after it.

But then, between the shakeology and dinner, I was super hungry. Given what I had planned for dinner, all I could eat was 1 purple. I chose ½ a banana because that seemed most sustainable of all fruits I had at home. Still was starving until dinner.

For dinner, I made chicken breasts with a chipotle-garlic dry rub (no salt), black beans, roasted Mexican tomatoes, and arugula salad with ¼ an avocado and homemade pico. Best ¼ avocado I’ve ever had lol. And everything was very flavorful. But this was a lot of food. I was stuffed afterward.

Going forward, I think I should disperse my food differently. On Day 1, I saved the majority of my food for dinner which caused me to be hungry all day long then stuff myself with food for dinner. I think its better to eat a bigger breakfast and more balanced meals/snacks throughout the day. Tomorrow’s (Tuesday) dinner plan looks like it will yield a more even distribution of food throughout the day, so I will see how I feel comparatively then and determine whether I need to make any additional adjustments to my plan as the week progresses.

Also, I am very proud of myself because last night at the Bachelor Finale viewing party I attended, everyone was eating Oreo Chocolate Cake, and I successfully stuck to my guns and said no! If you know how much I like oreos and chocolate and cake, you will know how big of a deal that is.

All in all, I was happy with Day 1 and definitely not dreading the next 20 days- still excited and hopeful! I can do this!