I'm back!

I'm back, and bigger than ever. True. Bigger than ever! Surprisingly, I am not devastated - but I am disappointed. There are a myriad of reasons behind my terrible weight gain - not that I am trying to place blame else where. I have had probably one of the most stressful and busiest years of my life. Following my cleanse in May I felt fantastic and ate healthy and controlled meals for quite a while. I even tried Nutrisystem (not worth the money). Then I did something that wasn't the smartest, but also pretty amazing....I trained for and ran a marathon!

I had an amazing group of friends to train with. However, I quickly realized those good habits I had gained post cleanse were not going to sustain me for marathon training. I feel like I jumped into this too fast. My life still remained busy. I even missed weeks of training at a time.....but, the carb loading had begun, and boy, did I have a good time with that!  The whole experience was hard and wonderful, however, I feel I put my not-so-young body under an incredible amount of stress in a short period of time. I was not in shape before I started running and did not train consistently during the marathon preparation.  Post marathon, I stopped training all together, but it was too hard to stop eating like I had during training....so I didn't. And...here I am.

Starting weight:  197.8  (Wow!!!!  Never ever before!)

I did two days of eating 'live' foods. I ate fruits and veggies and peanut butter. It felt good, especially having just gone through the holidays in a "I just don't care anymore" mode. I had intense head aches during this time as my body craved sugar and diet Mountain Dew. I stuck with it and at the end of the two days weighed 193.6

Day 1
I knew what to do and it went well. I felt extremely tired, but part of that was that I just had not had much sleep over the past week.  That evening was New Years Eve, and I thought I did well. I did, however, take a few bites of pizza, chocolate, cookie, and a few sips of Martinelli's sparkling cider. I didn't even feel guilty because I cheated on such a small scale. However, as I thought about it, I realized I wanted this cleanse to truly be a 'cleanse' - not just a weight loss jump starter. I was starting again, and hopefully this time NO cheating.

Day 1
Weight:  191 
It was a good day. I had the day off work and I stayed home all day, reading. I loved it. Occasionally I got a whiff of good food the kids were fixing, but I would just fix another bottle of lemonade and  I would be fine. I sat down at the dinner table with the kids. Creamy potato soup with french garlic bread....Mmmmmmm. I did just that. I smelled the soup up close, pressed the bread up to my nose. Mmmmm. But, I did not eat. I realized that these happy smells were just enjoyable. I was not hungry and would not feel better having consumed the food before me. I was content with my lemonade.
Since I decided I would do this cleanse completely right, I even had some Dandelion tea in the evening.