What I eat...

Oh I am on a roll today! 

Another big question I get is "What can I eat!?" when someone wants to know about the challenge.

And the answer is really simple… You can eat anything (sort of). 

Anything real. During the first 10 days you are cleansing and detoxing. Dairy, white bread, sugar, and caffeine (other that what you get in your Spark) are off limits. Making 80% good decisions (where as I use to make maybe 30% good decisions) is key.

If you see that it doesn't have dairy then I ate it on the cleanse. Most everything I ate on the cleanse portion I carried over into the max phase…I just sometimes put a little cheese in there!

Breakfast Options:

• Oatmeal- Steel Cut or Old Fashion. I would sprinkle a little Stevia bc I just can't eat it bland and add either a couple cut up strawberries or blueberries. A boiled egg or two on the side (sometimes I would eat the yolk and sometimes I wouldn't). I have realized that if I eat more protein at breakfast then I am not absolutely starving at lunch time. 
• Omelet or scrambled eggs bc I stink at making omelets -self explanatory. You can put so much goodness into these! I like chop up spinach, mushrooms, red bell pepper, onion,  and tomatoes and throw them in. You can also have whole grain during the cleanse so a piece of toast wouldn't kill you. I just stayed away from the bread during this part. 

I am not very creative when it comes to breakfast so that's about as crazy as I get. Once the max phase begun I mostly used my meal shakes in the AM. It was just easier.

Dinner (usually had leftovers for lunch)

• Gilled/baked fish/chicken. This was always an easy option. I looked up recipes for salt free seasonings and it was pretty simple. My favorite sides have been roasted asparagus, diced roasted sweet potatoes, roasted zucchini and squash… Get the picture? It's also an easy option. The sweet potatoes have been our favorite. I dice them up, drizzle olive oil and lay them out on a baking pan. I sprinkle with black pepper and just a little garlic powder… I never thought that would make a good combination but it does. I only thought that sweet potatoes went with marshmallows, sugar and butter!
• Anything that I use to cook with ground beef I replaced with ground turkey. We ate burgers without buns, tacos on lettuce, spaghetti with spaghetti squash instead of noodles…It's all about little changes. And to me the ground turkey is just so much tastier. And back to the spaghetti squash, if you haven't tried it, DO IT! It is SO cool! 
• I would make up a whole dish of baked chicken and tear it up for salads. Instead of salad dressing I just mixed half virgin olive oil and half red wine vinegar and drizzled a little so it wasn't dry. Once again adding in lots of extra veggies and berries. I love strawberries on my salad…
• And finally (some people consider this gross) but a can of tuna and mustard. Add a side of veggies and it's a quick meal! 

Snacks!

• Unsalted almonds
• Fresh fruit and veggies 
• Hummus with veggies or my weakness- a warm pita
• Plain rice cake with natural peanut butter and banana…if I'm being bad I add a couple of dark chocolate chips. 
• Apples and natural chunky peanut butter
• Plain sunflower seeds, not the kind you have to open yourself. Ain't nobody got time fo' that!
• Beef jerky- (not Slim Jims) I'm not really sure if that is really healthy or not, but I like it...

What I Dank:

WATER, LOTS AND LOTS OF WATER! And Spark! 

These are just some of the things that I liked to eat and cook while on the challenge, and even now that I'm done. And can I just say, my afternoon slumps are gone. I get up in the morning and most days I  have all the beds made, breakfast dishes cleaned, floors swept from breakfast mess, at least 1 load of washing started and us ready to go for whatever we are doing that day by 9:30. My kids are up by 6:30 every day at the latest. I use to give them cereal, turn on cartoons and snuggle with them until 9. It was so hard for me to get going, even with coffee! Yay for being a functioning morning person now!

Woo hoo!