It Ends Tomorrow...

Well, I'm just about done with the 24-Day Challenge and obviously, I've been very lax in blogging about it. Oops.

Honestly, there isn't a whole lot to report, so I'll give an overview. It's a lot of popping supplement pills (and gagging on them because of the taste which is weird, because I don't usually gag on meds) and being hungry. I did try out the muffins I had discussed previously. They were sweet potato muffins made with coconut flour. No sugar in these things - no sweetener at all aside from the sweet potato. They weren't bad, but they were really bland. Maybe it's because I substituted coconut oil for ground flaxseed, I don't know, but I only ate them a few days as snacks because they weren't that tasty. They needed a sweetener. Or something. The good news is that each one was only about 57 Calories, so three of them usually made up one snack and I felt like I was getting more to eat that way.

I also experimented more with "Larabar" recipes and had some good results. I followed one recipe for apple pie bars. They were pretty good, but not quite what I was hoping for. You could hardly tell there was apple in there. Sure, my cup of dried apple was a bit meager, but still. I also made a new batch of the oatmeal raisin ones I'd made before, this time doubling it, but I didn't have enough moisture for it to ball up like it should have. Instead, it just leached all the oil out of the peanuts and made them really greasy. Now I know, add some water. I also adapted the apple pie recipe to my own variation which used apples (a whole cup this time), raisins, oatmeal, peanuts, and cinnamon. These are by far my favorite and I hope to make more. Next time, I'll probably decrease the peanuts and increase the oatmeal by the same amount to see what happens. These tasty babies added up to 145 Calories, so I'm happy for that. I'm hoping to try some piña colada ones with some pineapple I dehydrated and coconut flakes I have, so we'll see if I ever get around to that.

Ok, so here are my meals for the past way too long. =)

Day 13
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Hard-boiled egg
- Pre-Lunch - Spark Energy Drink
- Lunch - Fruit Smoothie - banana, strawberries, blueberries, kale, gelatin
- Afternoon Snack - Sweet potato muffin (x3)
- Dinner - Tilapia filet, green beans, roasted beet

Day 14
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Mock Larabar - Oatmeal Raisin
- Lunch - Market Salad from Chick-fil-a (no blue cheese, homemade Italian dressing)
- Afternoon Snack - Sweet potato muffin (x3)
- Dinner - Smoked Turkey Breast, green beans

Day 15
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Mock Larabar - Apple Pie
- Lunch - Smoked turkey breast, strawberries, grapes, honeydew
- Afternoon Snack - (skipped, oops)
- Dinner - Fajitas, pinto beans

Day 16
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Mock Larabar - Apple Pie
- Lunch - Egg & bell pepper scramble
- Afternoon Snack - Mock Larabar - Apple Pie
- Dinner - Roasted chicken thigh over whole wheat spaghetti with homemade marinara and broccoli

Day 17
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Mock Larabar - Apple Pie
- Lunch - Leftover catfish, fresh tomatoes
- Afternoon Snack - Mock Larabar - Apple Pie
- Dinner - I made tacos for the fam, but I didn't want to make tortillas I could "legally" have, so I had a taco bowl of brown rice (with corn and peppers), taco meat, and pinto beans

Day 18
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Banana
- Pre-Lunch - Spark Energy Drink
- Lunch - Salad - romaine, carrots, boiled egg, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, homemade Italian dressing
- Afternoon Snack - (skipped, oops)
- Dinner - Pork loin, carrots, kale

Day 19
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Mock Larabar - Oatmeal raisin
- Lunch - Leftovers from taco night - rice, taco meat, pinto beans
- Afternoon Snack - Mock Larabar - Oatmeal raisin
- Dinner - Roasted chicken thigh with apple & onion sauce, green beans, peas & carrots

Day 20

- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - banana
- Lunch -Salad - romaine, carrots, boiled egg, bell peppers, diced apples, cucumber, homemade Italian dressing
- Afternoon Snack - (skipped, oops)
- Dinner - Salmon, sweet potato butternut squash soup

 I made up some soup to use up veggies that I had from my co-op since I had another veggie pick up the next day and several of the veggies weren't going to last too much longer. This soup was made with homemade veggie stock, sweet potatoes, roasted butternut squash, yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, onions, and garlic. Tasty stuff, and only 141 Calories per 2 cup(ish) serving!

Day 21
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Mock Larabar - Oatmeal raisin
- Lunch - Market Salad from Chick-fil-a - this time, they forgot to keep the blue cheese off, so I picked out what I could. I ate this one dry to try to avoid excess calories that I took in from the blue cheese (and I'm realizing that my homemade dressing just packs too many calories.
- Afternoon Snack - Mock Larabar - Apple Cinnamon (my new favorite)
- Dinner - Salmon, green beans, carrots (leftovers)

Day 22
- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Mock Larabar - Oatmeal raisin
- Lunch - We braved going out to eat at TGI Fridays. I ordered the Dragonfire Salmon and ate only half of it. I have no idea if there was sugar in the salsa they put on top or the cole slaw they served with it, but the whole dish was 600 Calories, so I'm hoping not.
- Afternoon Snack - Mock Larabar - Apple Cinnamon
- Dinner - Dragonfire Salmon leftovers, plus extra broccoli that hubs brought home from his lunch

Well, that brings us to today, day 23. I'll summarize today later (if I remember). Over all, I'm not doing too bad. I had some slips on caloric intake, going over my allotment on my FitBit, but overall, I've stayed under my caloric expenditure, so that's good. I also forgot an afternoon snack several days which is surprising considering how hungry I get in the afternoons, but what can I do?

Just another day and a half and no more challenge. The calorie counting and FitBit will continue well after, however. Until next time. =)

Half-way Mark!

Well, it's the end of day 2 in the Max Phase of the AdvoCare 24 Day Challenge. That means that it's officially the halfway mark. It seems weird to say I'm halfway done. From here on out, I have less time in front of me on this challenge than I've completed, and that's pretty cool. It really feels like it's gone by fast. Despite being super hungry a lot of the time and the initial caffeine addiction I had to get over, it hasn't been that bad. Ok, the hunger really sucks. Of course, if I'm being fair, I could be eating more, I'm just trying to keep to my FitBit meal plan and calorie allotment, so that makes the challenge harder.

I started looking around for plan approved baking recipes and I've found some different treats I want to try out. One that I did try was some homemade Larabars. If you aren't familiar with Larabars, they are fruit and nut bars, natural ingredients, no preservatives and all that jazz. I made some oatmeal raisin ones that were quite tasty. Not terribly low in calories, but not so much that they were a deal breaker as a snack. The recipe called for oatmeal, raisins, walnuts (I substituted peanuts), salt, and vanilla. I added a bit of cinnamon because it seemed like a good idea. It's all puréed together until it makes a sticky "dough" which gets formed into bars - if you want, that is, really, you can do any shape you want. The recipe makes 3 "Larabars" at about 180 kcal each. Well, mine were about that. Maybe the peanuts are especially high in calories because the recipe said they are 175. No matter, with no added sugar or fat and no refined grains, it's allowed in the plan, so I'm happy. And they were tasty. That's the best part. Wee man ate one and loved it, so I'll have to keep the recipe even after this program is over.

So, that was the most exciting part of the day. I'm hoping to try some muffins tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

Here's the meal plan for today:

- Spark Energy Drink

- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake

- Morning Snack - Pear

- Lunch - Catfish and carrots (leftovers)

- Afternoon Snack - homemade "Larabar"

- Dinner - Baked chicken thighs, green beans, carrots, kale

Despite my huge helping of veggies, the hunger set in not long after dinner. It's depressing, really. Oh well. Calorie count is still at a deficit and under allotment. I just have to keep that in mind. Bed soon... Tomorrow we go again.

Starting Phase Two

I've skipped a few days of blogging, so I'll summarize those as well as introduce the second phase which I started today.

So, the last three days were more of the same as I've described. Nothing terribly exciting. I'm lacking some serious creativity in the meal planning area, so it's a lot of the same stuff. Of course, given that I've gotten peppers on sale and then got peppers in my co-op basket, I've been eating a ton of peppers. You'd think I'd be tired of them by now. That and salads, but no. I'm not. Ok, maybe a little tired of the same things over and over, but I eat what's around and try not to be picky. After all, the lack of creative meals is my fault. In any case, the past several days looked a bit like this:

Day 8
- Spark Energy Drink
- Fiber Drink
- Breakfast - Smoothie (banana, strawberry, pear, chia seeds, gelatin)
- Morning Snack - green pepper strips
- Lunch - baked eggplant with fresh tomato sauce (sauce made with tomatoes, mushroom, onion garlic, peppers)
- Afternoon Snack - hard-cooked egg
- Dinner - bell pepper and egg scramble

Day 9
- Spark Energy Drink
- Fiber Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Banana
- Lunch - Salad (lettuce, green and red peppers, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, boiled egg, homemade Italian dressing)
- Afternoon Snack - Banana
- Dinner - Baked rosemary catfish, carrots, broccoli

Day 10
- Spark Energy Drink
- Fiber Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake, Banana
- Morning Snack - Banana
- Lunch - hard boiled egg, green and red pepper strips, tomatoes
- Afternoon Snack - Spark Energy Drink, blueberries
- Dinner - (ordered in) Sirloin Steak (this probably was a bad choice), baked sweet potato, house salad

So today, I started what I called "pill pushing." The second phase of this challenge is the "Max Phase" where I guess your body is supposed to be recharged to work better or something. This phase includes a ton of supplement pills. You take pills before breakfast, before lunch, at lunch, as well as the ones you were already taking at dinner time. It's crazy. Of course, part of it is also because I'm taking some optional supplements that were left over from when Hubs was doing it. There aren't enough of them to take them the whole time, but I'll take them until they are gone. They are after all, optional. In any case, other than the crazy quantities of supplements, my meals are roughly the same. Oh yeah, except, the guide pretty much says that the Meal Replacement Shake is breakfast every morning for the next two weeks, so there is that.

Ok, today's meals:

- Spark Energy Drink
- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake
- Morning Snack - Banana
- Lunch - Sweet Potato Veggie Soup (that I made on Saturday), hard boiled egg
- Afternoon Snack - Popcorn
- Dinner - Salad (lettuce, yellow and orange peppers, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, egg, homemade Italian dressing)

Alrighty. That's enough for today. I'll try to do a better job of chronicling this whole thing, but I may have to do the multiple-day summary again. Who knows. =)

One week down!

AdvoCare 24 Day Challenge Day 7: Complete.

I must have been really tired last night because even though posting to my blog was on my mind, I fell asleep anyway. Oh well.

Yesterday was a much better welcome than previous days. I didn't start and end the day with a headache, so I think I'm finally over the hump on my decreased caffeine intake. Yay!

It was a bit of an annoying day. I had my veggie pick up yesterday from Bountiful Baskets. I really like participating in a co-op because you don't get a choice of what you get and assuming you maintain the same guilt I do of letting "good money go to waste," you feel the need to use what you get and that includes things you are unfamiliar with, things you've never worked with, things you've never tried before, etc. It really expands the variety of fruits and veggies you eat, so it's really cool in that respect. I even ordered a bit extra this time because of my increased veggie consumption as a result of this challenge. I ordered my usual basket and in addition, I ordered a few additional packs. One was a juicing pack which had all kinds of cool things that I have no intention of actually juicing like cucumber, carrots, pineapple, and parsley (among others - I was surprised how nice of a size this pack was). I also got the Italian pack which I'll admit was a bit disappointing. Still worth the money paid, definitely, but it had a lot of herbs and I was hoping for more veggies - it still contained an eggplant which I was really excited about, as well as yellow squash and mushrooms which I could do without. I'll figure something out for the items I don't car for. I usually do. At the very least, it can go in a veggie stock for a nutrient packed base for any number of meals. What annoyed me though, other than the Italian pack being smaller than I hoped, was that the truck for the veggie pick up was late. I got an update in the morning while getting ready to go by text which is a nice change from having to look it up on Facebook. The truck was late. A little while later, another update that the truck would be even later. So basically, we waited around. Had I known it was going to be that time, I could have attended a birthday party we were invited to which was early in the morning. We could have gone to get the veggies afterward. But no, we waited. When the time came to go get them, the truck had just arrived and so we had to wait longer. We hadn't gotten an update that it would be even later than the last up date told us. I really dislike waiting around there because the boys are a bit wild and don't wait well in a line. Oh well. It certainly could have been worse.

Unintentionally, I did a total liquid meal day. The only solid items I had were my snacks. Weird. I wanted to see how a smoothie fit into the meal plan. It definitely means that I ate a ton of fruits - more than the daily recommendations from myplate.gov (the site is listed as a reference for meal planning for the 24 Day Challenge if I haven't mentioned that before). It turned out ok though. My calorie count was under my allowance for my FitBit meal plan, so yay! Also because of my meal choices, I was also low on protein. I had been going over on the protein recommendation on myplate.gov, so it's not a huge deal, but I certainly don't want to do the liquid thing to often. I should spread it out. Despite having mostly liquids during the day, I wasn't really that hungry. Probably because I stretched out meals. The morning Spark, Fiber Drink, and smoothie were spread out more than usual and I tried to drink my liquid meals really slowly so it took more time. It mostly worked except for at night. I got hungry after dinner pretty quickly.

The smoothie was not one of my best. It also really tested my Ninja, though I'm not sure why. I think I didn't have enough of a liquid content in it. That, and the avocado I added really thickened it. I've added avocado before, but I think the amount of avocado was a bit too much in comparison with the other items in the smoothie. I had a banana, half an avocado, a few small chard leaves and a small broccoli leaf, frozen strawberries, fresh blueberries, chia seeds, and some gelatin. It got too warm because I was trying to get it really blended up and the friction of the blending so much turned it warm. It was really thick. The flavors of the berries just did not come through. I certainly won't use that recipe again.

My dinner was veggie soup. I actually meant to make sweet potato soup. Because I had eaten some baked sweet potato the other night, I needed to use up the rest of the potato. I have no clue how long they last once they've been cut up an there is some left over, so I wanted to use it up. It turns out that my sweet potato to veggie ratio in the soup was lower than it should have been so, it was more of a veggie soup. No biggie though. It was still pretty tasty, just not what I planned. The soup contained  veggie stock, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, and yellow squash. It was only lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, but the pepper really came through and gave it a nice kick.

Anyhoo, here are my meals for yesterday:

- Spark
- Fiber Drink
- Breakfast - smoothie (banana, avocado, chard, broccoli leaf, strawberries, blueberries, chia seed, gelatin)
- Morning Snack - hummus (eaten straight off the spoon)
- Lunch - Meal Replacement Shake
- Afternoon Snack - banana
- Dinner - Veggie soup (veggie stock, sweet potato, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, yellow squash)

And I'll send you off with a lovely pic of that beautifully orange soup (divided into jars for easy serving - one jar per serving):

25% Done!

Ok, so, end of day 6 on the 24 Day challenge means I'm a quarter of the way through.

Today was pretty good. It flew by. I was working on some projects for the kiddos (educational games, activities, worksheets, etc) and trying to get laundry and dishes done. I feel like I blinked and the day was over. No nap out of either kid which meant emotional meltdowns out of both of them this afternoon.

I am doing better with what I've decided is caffeine withdrawal. I had a headache this morning, but it hasn't returned this evening - don't worry, I'm sure it'll show up before I post this write-up tonight. Still dealing with hunger issues. Calorie count today was within my budget even with my giant dinner. Honestly, I was hoping to eat a lot and fill myself up. No dice. I was hungry several hours later.

Alrighty, today's meals:

- Spark

- Fiber Drink

- Breakfast - oatmeal with blueberries

- Morning Snack - hard cooked egg

- Lunch - Meal Replacement Shake

- Afternoon Snack - popcorn

- Dinnner - egg scramble with broccoli leaves and red and green peppers, baked sweet potato chunks

Ok, well that's today. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

More Milestones?

24 Day Challenge day 5 complete. I'm at the halfway point for the cleanse phase.

Today seemed hectic. I ran errands and worked on worksheets for the boys. Meals got delayed, my afternoon snack forgotten. Oops. Oh well. Still had hunger issues today but got too distracted to eat. Could have been the cause. Oh well. At least I didn't deal with headache issues for most of the day until the evening. I overshot my calories again, but I'm still under what I burned. Not by much though.

Ok, today's meal plan:

- Spark

- Fiber Drink

- Breakfast - Meal Replacement Shake with banana mixed in

- Morning Snack - hummus on whole wheat tortilla

- Lunch - Salad with romaine, carrots, red bell peppers, tomatoes, hard-cooked egg, and homemade Italian dressing

- Afternoon snack - forgotten

- Dinner - Mexi dips, chicken on while wheat tortilla

Here's a pic of dinner: 

I did a chips and dips tray for a movie night with the boys. I added some chicken, but the dips are salsa, guacamole, beans, and cheese dip. Of course due to the challenge, I didn't eat the cheese dip (Velveeta dip, the rest were homemade from real foods). In place of the chips, I did a taco with the last whole wheat tortilla I had and then I used some of the chicken strips for dipping.

Good night! The adventure continues tomorrow.

End of Day 4 in 24

I feel like I've reached a mini goal. Mostly it's in my head. Or entirely. 1/6 of the way done. Starting a new phase. Kinda. Still the cleanse phase, but with probiotics. Which I forgot to take. Doh.

So bad headache again waking up. Went away after a bit. Only other issue is hunger. And another headache. This afternoon I started to get that dull pain, this time all over my head and my head started feeling cloudy. I drank an extra Spark and it helped temporarily. I think. But the hunger. After lunch, after afternoon snack (of course, dinner was really late), and after dinner. Once again, going to bed hungry. Joy of joys. Also, once again, I'm under calories burned, but over on my daily allotment for intake. No bueno.

Ok, today's meals:

- Spark first thing

- Fiber drink

- Breakfast - egg, red pepper, broccoli greens scramble and strawberries

- Snack - popcorn

- Lunch - salad with romaine, tomatoes, carrots, red pepper, hard cooked egg, and homemade Italian dressing 

- Snack - banana

- Dinner - steak, green beans, sautéed spinach