Clean Eating Challenge--Starting Monday, Feb. 28

OK, everyone. First, sorry for the absence. Work beckoned. And maybe some hockey tournaments and ski day or two.

I don't know if you saw in the comments, but Erin was talking about how since the Healthy Habits challenge ended, she has had trouble staying on track. Me, too, sister. I feel like I always need that challenge mentality going on to keep myself in check. Sad, but true. I just always need to be working towards some goal, whether it's weight loss, finishing a certain exercise program, eating a certain way (like trying being a raw vegan for awhile) or whatever.

So let's do this. Let's have another challenge. The bummer is, I'm not going to do prizes this time. No, this time, the prize is going to be about a healthier you, which is pretty darn good, if you ask me. So we'll go for a healthier you and bragging rights. The person who hits all of the challenge goals gets bragging rights and public kudos on the blog. For all 3 people who read it...yay, right?

One of the things we're going to focus on is eating a certain number of fruits and vegetables during the day. During the last challenge, I noticed a certain lack of raw, crunchy things :). So that will be part of this challenge.

We're going to start with something fairly simple. I'd like to see you follow the "formula" I learned from my BeachBody forum pals. It has served me well for about two years now. Once I started following it, the first thing that happened was that I stopped gaining weight--and that had just steadily been happening for a long time. Then I realized that I could eat the foods I liked, enjoy them and not feel guilty. Then I started losing weight.

Exercise will be a part of the challenge as well. I will tell you that weight loss is about 80% what you're doing in the kitchen and 20% exercise.

Keep a food journal and track your calories. I cannot emphasize this enough.

My cousin, Jean, just got a BodyBugg. And Joan, I don't know if you're still reading, but I'd be curious as to how it's going with your BodyBugg, too. I'd love for the two of you to report in and tell me what you've learned since wearing it. It was a huge eye opening experience for me and I'm dying to know if other people had them same thing happen to them.

So, the details.

What: Clean Eating Challenge
When: Monday, February 28 - Saturday, March 26--four weeks again, baby!

The formula:
-You eat "clean" 6 days a week.
-You eat at least 1,200 calories a day. Less than that, your body can't function and you'll screw up your metabolism.
-You eat two fruits and three vegetable servings a day.
-You have one designated "cheat" day a week. Some of you have commented that you don't like to have an entire cheat day. That's fine. I've sort of shifted away from that, too, but do what works for you.
-Report in once a day, just like last time. You have a 3 day grace period though.
-Exercise 5x/week for at least 30 minutes. Come on. Quit with the bellyaching excuses and just do it.


Some tips:
-Plan meals. Not planning leads to trouble. Trust me. Trouble is my middle name.

-Track your food. Cannot stress this enough if weight loss is one of your goals. I know it seems tedious and I know you want to fight me on it. Give in. Track. See the benefits. I love tracking. It's like a big science project.

-Look at your schedule for the coming week. Where do you have events that might derail your plan to eat clean? For example, on March 3rd, I'm going out with the moms from Declan's hockey team (we're having a spa night and we can take food and wine). I'll decide ahead of time what I want to do. Do I want to move my traditional cheat day from Friday to Thursday this week? Or do I want to take foods that I trust myself with to eat and stay on track that day? I'm not sure yet, but that will be a part of vision for the week as I plan meals and workouts.

-Exercise. Where will you fit it in? Traveling? What can you do to not miss your workouts. I wrote on my other blog about how I found an empty conference room at the hotel we stayed at for the hockey tournament last weekend. Workers walked in on me 5 minutes before the end of my workout on Sunday. On Monday, the walked in 10 minutes into a 55 minute workout. I debated--should I leave? I asked them if I needed to vacate. They said no and I leapt about while they worked for 45 more minutes. They started asking me questions about the workout, said they were impressed (I'm sure they were just as moritifed as I was by the whole situation and were trying to be nice) and in the end, it came out that one of the guys had done both P90X and Insanity. BeachBody is everywhere. In the end, I was glad I stayed. It boosted my confidence and I got a killer workout because there was no way I was slacking off when those guys could potentially see me.

-Weigh and measure yourself on Day One and again at the end. Eamonn used to say all the time to not focus so much on the number and look at inches lost. He's right.

-Clean out your cupboards. This kind of goes along with plan meals. Get rid of your trigger foods. Life is so much easier when you don't have them around. If I thought I could go through life happy with a hunk of cheese in my fridge, I'd do it, but I can't. I keep some cheese here for the masses, but for the most part, I try to avoid it because once I start eating it, I can't stop.

-Eat dark chocolate every day. That's serious advice, but keep it to an ounce and work it into your calorie total for the day. And if you eat a nice, high quality dark chocolate, you'll be satisfied with a taste. Note: only do this if you can stop at an ounce. If chocolate is a trigger food, get it out.

-Set goals. Be specific. Lose 5 lbs. in 4 weeks. Increase the number of push ups you can do from 10 to 15. Whatever. Decide what your goals are, set them, and achieve them.

So that's pretty much it. Ready, set, --get planning. Feel free to share recipes and ideas. Post problems or questions. Let us know your successes. If you need help determining what amount of calories you should be eating or workout ideas, let me know. I have access to calorie calculators through BeachBody--might as well take advantage of it!