Day 8

What an exciting day. It has been a week since I have started this journey and today began with a trip to the scales. . . Oh yeah – you know you would have done the same thing too. I am pleased and proud to say over the course of this past week I have lost 6 pounds. I am also proud to say that I have lost it the healthy way. I have not given up eating. I have not exercised myself to death. I have not given up on food. Everything that I have eaten for the last week has been lean, green or all around good for you. I have not eaten out once this week. I have not splurged on one dessert or sweet thing that nature didn’t make. I have eaten 3 meals a day and munched on snacks like yogurt, berries, apples, celery, carrots, cucumbers and dip (made with greek yogurt of course). Guess what – I feel great. I had one moody day and one headache all week. I have not been without energy and honestly I feel better! I am very excited about this. I guess because I know that I am eating the things that are best for my body.

Tonight for dinner I tried another new recipe. This is something that I would have never thought I would ever cook myself. I can say I have had this dish before but I can promise it was nowhere near as healthy as what I cooked tonight. I made lettuce wraps. I used ground turkey for the meat and made the homemade sauce to put on them. They were delicious. I got the recipe off of THE DOCTORS blog website for the 17 day diet. There is a recipe in the back of the book but I didn’t like the looks of it as well as I did this one. It was truly delicious. My husband liked it a lot too. We both like it so well that there is none left for lunch tomorrow. Good thing I kids had already made dinner for themselves and ate. (They wanted spaghetti and toast – and I must say the spaghetti didn’t tempt me but that buttery cheese toast setting on the table was really hard to look.) After we finished dinner I couldn’t help but think – now I would have never cooked this dinner had we not been doing this diet. It really was not hard. It was worth all the effort.

So looking back at the week as a whole I must say the hardest part for me is getting in the mindset that I must be prepared. I cannot just get up every morning and think “oh don’t worry about what you will eat – you will be fine”. The reason for this is because convenient foods are not usually good for you foods. They are not foods that your body needs and they won’t do much to satisfy hunger. So each day I plan what I will eat. It really isn’t hard though because you need to eat 2 yogurts each day – well there is 2 snacks. You get 2 fruits a day – but they must be eaten by 2pm. You get eggs for breakfast and then all the good for you veggies and lean meat you can eat without overeating the rest of the day. So really you are just trying to figure out “what’s for dinner?” and you are going to have to do that anyway.

What has been the easiest part? Surprisingly, the easy part has been that I have made up my mind! I don’t know where I will be in 6 months but I have set my goal at 17 days and I am almost half way there. I am loving the feeling of not being controlled by what is in my cabinets. I don’t have to say no to it but I am choosing to say no for now and in doing so I have found that I really don’t want those kinds of foods anyway. It is almost like the feeling I get when I go running. The first mile is always the hardest but once I get going I really just have to run until I tell myself I can stop. I may go slowly for a while and I may turn up the volume on my ipod but I don’t quit till I am done. That is the focus I have taken with this diet. I know what I am doing is good for me. I feel like it is right. Now I am just going to put one foot in front of the other till I reach the goal I have set for me. Sounds like a winner’s plan to me.

Foods for today: scramble egg, orange, grilled chicken, roasted cauliflower and carrots, strawberries, greek yogurt, lettuce wraps, yogurt

I did not officially work out today. However, I came home at 5:30 and did not stop and sit down (other than dinner) till 9:00.