First of all, let me get this out of the way.

I’m not selling anything.

There.  Now you can relax.

This post is an outgrowth of me posting a photo of what I was having for breakfast on Instagram.  Later that day, I decided to go ahead and post what I was having for lunch.  Then I figured why not dinner.

The next day, someone asked me around lunch time what I’d had for breakfast so I posted again… and so on and so on.

I posted every meal for seven days.  And I lost 9 pounds.

Photo Jan 23, 9 28 38 AM

Now let me start by saying that I don’t expect to lose 9 pounds a week from here on out.  Last week was an anomaly.

If you’ve ever watched the Biggest Loser, you know that at the end  their first week on the ranch, the contestants weigh in and experience the loss of crazy amounts of weight. There’s a reason for that.

When you eat clean, there are two things that you lose a lot of right off the bat.  1) Water and 2) Gut sludge.

Our standard American diet (SAD) is extremely high in sodium and crud that doesn’t move easily through our digestive systems. Lots of salt leads to water retention and lots of crud leads to gut sludge. When you eat clean however, you remove those factors from your diet and your system works to rid itself of excess product it would rather do without.

In laymen’s terms, clean eating is eating food that is not processed or eating foods that are as close to their natural state as possible.  If you want a more in depth explanation of clean eating you can check out this one from CNN.com here.  You can also Google, “what is clean eating”.  You will be overwhelmed but you will have plenty of information.

Photo Jan 23, 10 12 59 AM

A few years back I discovered the book Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman.  To this day I have his basic principles of what to eat/not eat posted on my fridge.  That doesn’t mean I always look at before I open my refrigerator door to get something to eat.  I’m just keeping it real here.  But it is definitely a reminder.

After a holiday season that, for me, started out with pretty successfully dietary decisions but then quickly plummeted into a a gluttonous binge, an increased struggle in food choices, I decided to get back to eating clean and used Dr. Fuhrman’s guidelines as the base for what would go into my mouth. My desire was not to eat this way in an unbalanced or extreme way but to use it as a guideline for making good, solid, food decisions on a daily basis.  You will find as you look at my daily food diary that I had a few hiccups now and again but overall I ate pretty good and clean.

Enough already… you say?

Get to the details… you say?

OK… Here’s how I ate and exercised for seven days. If you want to view my menu in detail with measurements, macros, and calories, you can check out my  food diary. (I used myfitnesspal.com)

I’ve added a few photos to add some eye-candy to the post, but if you want to see all of the pictures, just browse my Instagram feed from last week.

Unless otherwise specified, assume I drank  water – lots and lots of water.

OK… here we go…

Monday

Breakfast – 1/2 cup oatmeal, finger banana, 2 tsp peanut butter (Whole Foods freshly ground… yum), “Skinny Greens” green juice from thejuicebardallas.com

Photo Jan 23, 9 22 33 AM

Lunch – 1 cup of pinto beans, romaine salad w/ 2T dried cranberries, 2T of sunflower seeds, and a squeezed lemon (no dressing)

Photo Jan 23, 9 24 37 AM

Dinner – 3 oz of grilled tilapia, 1 cup of steamed green beans, 1 cup of fresh cut pineapple

Snack – 2 Biscoff cookies (the kind that Delta hands out for a snack… ridiculously tasty) and 4 oz of sweet tea.

Exercise – Caught the last 15 minutes of a spin class then got on the treadmill for a 2 mile jog.

Tuesday

Breakfast – “Chocolate-Goodness-in-a-Blender” – 1 scoop of Garden of Life  Raw Protein meal replacement/protein mix, 1 cup of rice milk, 2tsp of raw almond butter, 1 tsp of Kyo Greens, 1 banana

Lunch –  3 oz of grilled tilapia, 1 cup of steamed green beans, 1 can of Amy’s Organic Lentil Soup

Dinner – 3 oz of grilled tilapia, 1 cup of steamed green beans, 3 oz of Jerk chicken with mango sauce (recipe coming soon) over 3 cups of romaine lettuce

Photo Jan 23, 9 23 29 AM

Snack – 2 cups of Skinny Pop (low fat popcorn), 1 small apple, 1 oz of raw mixed salted nuts.

Exercise – Nada

Wednesday

Breakfast – 2 egg whites w/2T of shredded mozarella and spinach, 1/2 cup of apple/cinnamon oatmeal, and a banana

Lunch – Leftover Jerk Chicken from Tuesday’s dinner w/leftover Mango salsa  over a bed of greens on an Ezekiel  bread tortilla.  Topped off with one glorious tablespoon of guacamole.

Dinner – 4 oz of grilled tilapia, 1 cup of steamed green beans, 1/2 cup black eyed peas (cooked w/leftover bacon… oops!), treated myself to a 16oz Sweet Leaf peach tea

Snack – finger banana w/2 tsp peanut butter

Exercise – Taught my first fitness class ever at 24 Hour Fitness!!! Whooop!  One hour of spinning!

Photo Jan 23, 10 10 06 AM

Thursday

Breakfast – 1 hard boiled egg, 4 Late July crackers, 1 oz of natural cheddar cheese, 1/2 cup of fresh mango chunks, finger banana w/2 tsp peanut butter (yes… again)

Photo Jan 23, 9 23 52 AM

Lunch – Treated myself to Panera Bread. Pick 2. Fuji Chicken Apple Salad and French Onion Soup. Not super clean but clean enough. And yes… I got bread as a side item and ate it.

Dinner – Leftover redesigned… again. Same meal as Tuesday’s lunch. This one is a winner!!! Getting permanently filed in the recipe notebook!

Snack – Nada

Exercise – Tried a Zumba class with my 18yo and my sissy. I’m not a good dancer but I still had a good time shaking my pa-tooty.

Friday

Breakfast – “Chocolate-Goodness-in-a-Blender” – 1 scoop of Garden of Life  Raw Protein meal replacement/protein mix, 1 cup of rice milk, 2tsp of raw almond butter, 1 tsp of Kyo Greens, 1 banana

Photo Jan 23, 9 25 11 AM

Lunch -Pan sautéed halibut (love it in restaurants so decided to try at home), 1 cup of black eyes peas (mixed with a bit of leftover baked beans), large romaine salad w/1T sunflower seeds, 1T dried cranberries, dash of Spike, and a spritz of lemon (no dressing)

Dinner –  16 oz C-Blast green juice from thejuicebardallas.com.  Meant to eat black eyes peas and salad but passed out before that happened.

Snack – finger banana w/2 tsp peanut butter

Exercise – Ran +4 miles to the post office.  Don’t be impressed.  I’m a s-l-o-w runner.

Saturday

Breakfast – “Barebones -Chocolate-Goodness-in-a-Blender” – 1 scoop of Garden of Life  Raw Protein meal replacement/protein mix, 1 cup of water, 2T of Just Great Stuff- Organic Powdered Chocolate Peanut Butter, and 1 tsp of Kyo Greens.

Lunch – Out running with my kids and we all went to Chick Fil A.  Asian Salad w/fried chicken. Used 1/2 of the dressing, 1/2 wontons and no almonds.

Photo Jan 23, 9 25 25 AM

Dinner –  My sister forced me to join her for mexican food.  So that made two #cheatmeals for today. 1/2 beef quesadilla, a bit of guacamole, sour cream, pico, and a few swigs of a FABULOUS Coke. Oh…and I lost count on the chips.

Photo Jan 23, 9 25 44 AM

Snack – 2 Biscoff cookies and 4 oz of milk.

Exercise – Taught two spin classes at a local private fitness studio

Sunday

Breakfast – My “big” Sunday breakfast. Homemade whole wheat waffle w/1T of pure maple syrup, one boiled egg, and one SLAMMIN’ piece of turkey bacon (no nitrites!) 

Lunch – 2 Bananas.  I was too busy and stressed working on cleaning out my closet to take a break.

Dinner –  Large plate filled with Southwestern Chopped Salad (romaine lettuce, black beans, corn, tomatoes, orange bell pepper, green onions), 2T of Ken’s Creamy Balsamic With Honey

Snack – Costco samples after church

Exercise – Nada

So there you have it folks – 9 pounds in 7 days.  Do I expect to have the same results next week?  Nope… my gut doesn’t have as much sludge to deal with and I’ve already released much of the extra water I was carrying around.

Do I expect to continue to mostly clean eating and exercise.  Yup!

Oh! And please don’t be discouraged by the exercise part if you can’t do or don’t want to do the kind of exercising I did. How you move doesn’t matter as much as that you get moving doing something.  

Exercise definitely helps but the food is the main thang ya’ll. I’ve blogged about my fight with the #fatdemon and what I tell people when they ask me what I’m doing to lose weight. Be sure and check out that post if you haven’t already.

I’m on a journey and I plan on staying on this road to better health. God is calling me into unchartered territory in this season of my life and I want my body to be able to keep up with the tasks that He’s giving me to do.

I hope that this post has encouraged you to make small changes in your food choices or the amount of movement that you do everyday.

So far in my weight loss journey, I’m down over 40 pounds over the last 18 months.  I’m a homeschool mom of five kids and I wear like a-zillion hats.  If I can do it. You can do it.

 

Need an awesome playlist to listen to while you work out?

CLICK HERE TO subscribe to my email list!

You’ll get the playlist and access to exclusive content!