21 Day Fix Report

I'm coming to the end of week three of the 21 Day Fix eating plan I'm on. I will admit, my daily exercise routine fell off at the end of week one. Although, that week I did work out 5 days in a row, which is pretty huge for me. Also, I have been successful with the eating plan. To sum up the plan without gaining a lawsuit (for giving away trade secrets), I have basically gotten myself into a clean eating, portion control program. I knew about the portions - there are colored containers - but I didn't necessarily pick up on the clean eating part right away.

Before getting into details of the plan I want to add that I have not adhered to the plan 100%. Before starting I knew I had a dinner party the first weekend and a family get together the second weekend. I was able to eat clean all week and I did indulge for ONE meal at each party. That's one of the important things. They weren't "cheat days" they were "cheat meals." Big difference.

I am pretty excited about how I've been eating. Although... I am always excited about food - hence the reason I am even worrying about this. I'm excited for two reasons:

One, I feel like I have finally found a sustainable "eating right" plan that I could really apply to the rest of my life.

Two, I have FINALLY, FINALLY found a way to combat my biggest diet/commitment problem. It's called decision fatigue, and I didn't have a name for it until the first week in January. I was talking to a friend on gchat about my past inability to commit to a diet and she sent me the article I just linked about willpower. I didn't even end up reading the entire article right away because I was just too excited about the paragraph about decision fatigue. Now that I've been able to identify my biggest hurdle I can manage it so much better. When I wake up every day knowing what I'm going to be eating that day, the exhausting process of trying-to-find-something-healthy-to-eat-while-you're-ravenous becomes a non-issue.

The best way to combat decision fatigue is to meal plan. A step further than that is to plan for cravings. My biggest cravings are for sweets and dairy, so for this week I planned to eat these tacos with a big dollop of greek yogurt on them to replace the mounds of sour cream that I usually crave with tacos. It actually worked. Greek yogurt alone doesn't taste like sour cream (not even close) but paired with a corn tortilla and ground turkey made with low sodium taco seasoning, I didn't even have to pretend. It was great! I honestly didn't even need the cheese I used. For the rest of the week I had just the turkey and "sour cream."

Of course even with the taco and sour cream plan I still have cravings daily. I even crave things I normally wouldn't eat. For example, I was pumping gas the other day and this monster buffalo sandwich ad was staring me right in the face. Normally this wouldn't even be something I'd want, but since I couldn't have it... It was the best looking sandwich I'd ever seen.

Meal planning doesn't "fix" my problems; but it has definitely made the tough choices easier, and helped me tame the hangry beast inside of me (most of the time). Next post I'll show you some more of the great substitutions I made these last few weeks, and which ones made me want to puke.