The Last Day of #OurOctoberChallenge

Today is October 30th, 2013. Today is the LAST day of our Eat Clean/Drink Sober Challenge! We made it! It did it! We set out on a challenge and we saw it all the way through!

I can’t believe that we stuck with it and actually made it through 30 days of the Eat Clean/Drink Sober Challenge, because to be honest I was ready to throw in the towel by the 4th day. It was rough to get use to but we adapted. If you missed out on our Challenge I’ll do a little recap.

On October 1st BigBear and I started a Eat Clean/Drink Sober Challenge. This meant for 30 straight days we had to eat clean, we couldn’t have processed/boxed meals, we couldn’t eat out, we couldn’t have things like white flour, sugar or ice cream etc and we couldn’t drink alcohol. ( No eating out killed me! All I want is some take out! haha )

We had to change our eating styles a lot! Our menus for the weeks had to do a total spin. No more relying on take out when we were drop dead tired from work, no boxed meals from the freezer, no fast food drive-thru for lunch. We had to literally make every single meal that we were going to eat for the entire month.

So did we stick to the extreme clean eating guidelines? Probably not as much as some say we should. There is only so much I can handle haha. But I’d say that we stuck to them as close as we could!

Examples of what was probably not 100% Clean Eating:

I’m not a morning person, so I’d rather starve than eat a huge breakfast in the morning. I rely on cereal BUT I made sure that my cereal wasn’t loaded with sugar! I went with Organic, GMO free granola, grain and seed cereals with vanilla almond milk for breakfast.

Bread…I’m pretty sure that all bread counts as processed food. While I didn’t make my own bread, I did opt for Whole grain, Harvest Grain and Seed bread instead of cheap white bread.

Peanut Butter and Jelly. This was my go to when I literally had 5 minutes to pack my lunch or if dinner was happening so late that I couldn’t imagine turning the stove on. However, I had the Harvest Grain and Seed bread and I used Natural Peanut Butter and Natural Jelly (and they had less than 5 ingredients on the labels). – always paired with green grapes, an apple or a banana.

BigBear had to have Hawaiian Punch. I drank water the whole time along with maybe 1 glass of milk the entire month. BigBear however normally downs a pack of diet soda in no time! He gave up the soda for the month but I let him keep the Hawaiian Punch. While I would have rather him drink water, I was willing to bend the rules if he’d give up the soda.

Any slip ups? Yes. Here are our slip ups for the month:

Me:

handful of yogurt covered pretzels
1 cookie – when making Halloween cookie stacks– habit haha
1 cup of hot chocolate from a mix

BigBear:

1 night eating out – BUT he did have the salad bar
yogurt covered pretzels
NASCAR Race day Cheat Day – Buffalo Wild Wings ans IHop haha (but not Beer! Go BigBear!!)

As of today, I’ve lost 14 pounds on this Eat Clean/Drink Sober Challenge and I think BigBear has lost about 10.(I’m not 100% sure on how much he lost)

I have a lot more energy and don’t feel as sluggish and yucky as I had been feeling. (we literally felt like death the first week when our bodies were “detoxing”)

I joined our local Planet fitness last week and have been going every other day with my friend Nikki. I’m determined to get rid of more pounds and to continue to feel good.

I don’t think we’re gonna stick to this 100% after today but I do think we’ll be changing a lot of things in our life. We’ll probably stay with it 90% I think. I still want to be able to eat out, but for enjoyment not because I’m too lazy to cook. I still want to have a cupcake without feeling like the world will end and I still want to enjoy wine haha. But our view on a lot of things has changed. I find myself viewing some of my favorite junk food with “eww, I can’t believe I was eating that”. It’s crazy.

We had been getting better over the past year with our shopping, trying to stay on the perimeter where the fresh produce is and away from the junk sections but this month our shopping cart was literally filled to the top with fresh fruits and veggies.

Oh and I had to be creative a lot of the time so that dinner wasn’t just “Chicken and Broccoli”. Let me tell you, it was a bit of a struggle. I had some flops, but I did get some pretty good recipes out of the month! BigBear even cooked a few meals! I’ll have to say his lemon chicken and steak nights were probably some of my favorites!

So 14 pounds lost, new energy gained and some new recipes that we’ve stuck into our “favorite” folder, I feel like the month was a win for us!

Here are some of the recipes that I tried and posted this month for #OurOctoberChallenge: