Checking In & Wrapping Up.

So the third and final week of the 21 Day Adventure Cleanse is upon us and....I have cut the "cleanse" short. 

I know, I know. I felt like a failure when I decided to step off the raw, vegan ride but I am ONLY allowing myself to leave the party early as to avoid a huge binge of some sort and to keep myself on track. I weighed in on Saturday morning, after nearly two full weeks on the cleanse (minus some very minor cheats that I worked off in the gym). I hadn't lost any weight. Zip, zilch, nada.  Still. 

I've mentioned before that I lose weight very slowly, so slowly that my doctor was positive I had a thyroid problem or something like that until I did a ton of blood panels and we found absolutely nothing wrong with me, just a case of poor genetics I guess. When I stepped on the scale and saw no movement, despite working hard, I felt discouraged. I felt disappointed in myself and wanted to give up. Like, if I'm going to look like this anyway why not eat french fries and spend more time watching TV on the couch? So, I decided to go off the cleanse to take some pressure off. Kind of, sort of.

Kris Carr says to make it work for you and that's exactly when I'm going to do. I really did enjoy the cleanse and I have felt a lot better since starting out two weeks ago. I plan to continue to incorporate a lot of the elements of the cleanse into my lifestyle (dry brushing, wheatgrass shots, fresh juice for breakfast, etc.). On Saturday I decided to start watching caloric intake instead of focusing just on being vegan/raw and I've lost two pounds as of this morning. Maybe I was just stressing myself out too much to lose weight on the cleanse? Maybe I wasn't getting enough calories? Who knows? I plan to continue tracking everything on MyFitnessPal and hitting the gym as many days a week as possible. I'm also going to slowly cut out dairy and processed products, as opposed to dumping everything all at once. I am making it work for me and I plan to use some of the great-looking recipes from Carr's cookbook, while also relying on some (healthy) Guffey household favorites.

Part of the point of sharing my journey even when things don't go as planned is to teach myself to be more aware and to stop being so hard on myself. I'll still be posting weekly about weight-loss progress and my goal to slowly wean off of all processed food.

 Want to encourage one another? Let's connect on MyFitnessPal.