Whole Life Challenge Update

I’ve now been doing the Whole Life Challenge for seventeen days. This means that for the last seventeen days, I’ve been exercising daily, drinking a ton of water, stretching every day and most significantly not eating chocolate, not drinking diet coke or lattes. Also not eating bread, cheese, corn, milk, and any processed food.

Add to that the fact that I don’t cook and one would think I’ve had nothing to eat. Considering all that, I will say that it hasn’t been nearly as challenging as it sounds. (Though there’ve been plenty of challenging moments.) I’ve basically been sticking to a pretty consistent breakfast-lunch-dinner routine daily.

Breakfast: Black Coffee + Water + Whole Grain Oatmeal (i’ve been eating these) with raspberries and blueberries

Lunch: Big salad with lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes, celery and then I add chicken or lentils or beans and blueberries or honeydew + water + tea

Snack: My big salad takes a while to eat, but if i am hungry, I’ll make some more coffee and have a few nuts of a bit of a lara bar or some fruit (sometimes i have all of these things.)

Dinner: Dinner is trickiest for me. Sometimes I am really not hungry so I will have some yogurt, some tea/cofffee/linden tea. If I am hungry, I will eat an Amy’s Bowl (this and this are compliant for my level). If I am still hungry I might eat some more of my Lara bar or almonds.

I usually eat my dinner early (5/6pm) and will then possibly snack at 7 with a fruit. I usually go to bed no later than 9pm since I wake up at 5am.

Here are a few other things I do:

• Once a week, I will cook 6-7 chicken patties to have a week’s worth of chicken.
• I go to Whole Foods to get carrot and beet salad because I like them and am too lazy to grate them myself
• I will make one big omelette with 3 eggs on Sundays and put a lot of veggies in it just to experiment and have fun. It’s easy to eat a lot of eggs on this diet and so I am trying not to get too dependent on eggs as I want to keep my diet vegetable heavy.
• I will also make Almond and Peanut butter when I am at Whole Foods and if I am hungry or craving chocolate, I will grab a spoonful of either
• I haven’t been to many social events yet but now that I have 17 days under my belt, I am considerably less worried, though we’ll see
• It’s getting better but I still really dislike the taste of black coffee. It still sort of tastes like what I imagine eating cigarettes to be.
• Apparently my vitamin B is really low so I’ve changed my supplement to be B3 per my doctor’s advice

I know this doesn’t seem like a lot of food but I am never hungry. Most of the time, I am eating because I am bored and having these limited options allows me to make wiser choices during those moments. And eventually I hope I will stop eating because I am bored and only eat when I am actually hungry.

The exercise has also been going well. I stopped being incredibly sore after day three. I still hurt while I exercise so I know I am pushing myself but it’s not the acute, cannot-walk pain from the first days. Progress.

I haven’t measured myself again but I did get on the scale last week and I’ve lost some weight already but most importantly, I just feel good about finally changing the way I eat and getting a lot more vegetables in my system every single day.

Let’s see what the next seventeen days brings.

ps: in case I haven’t mentioned, I am now Instagramming occasionally.