80-10-10, Day 6 ~ #1 Goal Reached!

My first goal has now been realized....I made it past 5 days of being 100% with no cheating whatsoever. Yay!!!! It feels good to have made it this far. Thursday the 6th, which is one week from today, will mark the most I have ever been 100% 80-10-10. From seeing the results I have so far, I can't wait to see what it will be like on the 2-week mark!

Yesterday was hard, though...probably harder than any of the other days have been. I got into kind of a funk...didn't want to clean, really messy house, DH had been gone for almost 2 days and I was just getting kind of tired of doing everything as a "single" mom, you know? All I want to do when this happens to me is eat something really bad for me and block out the emotion.

I usually get the kids a free cookie from whatever grocery store we happen to be going to that day as a treat for being good, and on Tuesday I promised them that....then decided to ask my MIL if she would babysit while I went. I had ALOT of groceries to get and just didn't feel like lugging the four little ones with me. Plus, I always have to get 2 carts since the baby & 1 year old fill up one whole cart. (I had so much fun, I got $233 worth of groceries for $33 at Safeway, doing the Grocery Game - woohoo!!!)

Anyway, all that to say - I bought them a pack of chocolate chip cookies since I promised them one and I very very rarely do that. I know my weakness with cookies, cake, chips, chocolate, ice-cream, and the like so I never keep them in the house....and yesterday I was really tempted to just chow down on like, half the entire box. But thanks to YOU GUYS who read this blog & are holding me accountable (in my own mind, LOL), I didn't give in.

I remembered how much I have been wanting to prove to myself that I can do this, and how much I want to experience the awesome health benefits of 80-10-10...and of course, how I want to reach my goals for weight. So instead I sat down with a bunch of bananas and ate about 5 of them - which filled me up and actually gave me alot of energy, so that when DH came home the house was sparkling clean. Okay, well maybe not sparkling clean, but it was clean-er than earlier in the day. Plus, I didn't give in and eat junk - happy happy dance!

This morning for some reason I woke up out of the blue at 6:50, to find DH sleeping in the bed next to me still. He always aims to get to work by 6:45 so is usually gone by then, but depending on what he has going on that day, like meeting someone for breakfast at 8am or something, he'll sometimes sleep in.

The thought occured to me that since the baby wakes up at 7:30, I should go for my 20-minute run real quick since it was light out and DH was home to babysit (if you call sleeping babysitting, LOL!) since all the kids were still sleeping. Um.....yeah....no, I don't feel like getting up, I told myself. But then after I lay there for a few more minutes I remembered how awesome it felt to be out there in the cool morning with the crisp air, the sun coming up over the hills. And how I won't be getting another chance to go since this weekend DH will be gone at a youth retreat for our church.

So I did it! I was sooooo happy when I got back - and something interesting, I felt like it was much easier this time. Not easy, but easy-er, definitely. I didn't feel like I was going to die at any given time. This makes me think about what alot of people have reported feeling on 80-10-10, that they are astounded by the way their body responds to a low fat, high fruit diet. I came across this awesome testimonial a year ago when I got interested in doing 80-10-10, and you can read the whole thing here. But here's part of what intrigued me:

For the first time in my life I actually truly want to exercise. I find myself looking for excuses to move my body, which is very foreign to me indeed. I had always been one to find excuses to sit where I was and not exercise. Never before have I experienced looking forward to my free time in order to exercise! As a result, I’m starting to look more athletic. People now think I’m a dancer or a gymnast.

I discovered new physical abilities, as well. My balance, coordination, and dexterity dramatically improved somehow, even at the beginning, before I had been active much at all. My aerobic exercise had always been limited by my breathing capacity, because I would lose my breath long before my muscles would get enough of a workout to work out my heart.

Now, in retrospect and in comparison, it was like I had been running on dirty fuel when I exercised before. Suddenly, aerobic workouts felt so “clean” and “crisp.” I felt like I could go forever (but my heart wasn’t used to it, so I took it gradually). I could breathe really deeply and not have that sick and dirty feeling at the beginning. It was and still is great! Now when I’m exercising, I feel happy and my body feels happy, which makes me happier, which gives me more energy and motivation to keep exercising, which makes me even happier, and so on … I love it! I’ve never felt like this before.

Losing the extra 20lbs I'm carrying around for me is going to be awesome. But the real core issue of going raw is all about improving everything about who I am - Janie writes about this as well:

Prior to going raw, I had been close to a nervous breakdown as a result of living in a high state of stress for several years. I knew I needed to de-stress, but I couldn’t see how, without conditions changing in my life. I couldn’t exercise or do other stress-relieving activities, because I would just feel like I was getting further behind on things, which would stress me out even more (counterproductive to say the least).

Now I am far less prone to stress and emotional baggage issues. My emotions are more even and at a higher level than before. I still attend to things, but I don’t feel stressed about them. I feel too good to bother, actually. It is not my life that changed, it’s me. I simply am not as stressed about things anymore. In fact, I have had even more stressful things happen in my life than before, yet I have felt less stressed during these times.

It’s kind of hard to describe … I guess the best way is to say that I’m at peace, more so than ever before—at peace with who I am, who everyone else is, and with what is going on in my life and around me. From my experience, good health truly is happiness and peace of mind. I just plain feel good, and it’s hard to get too down when you feel so darned good all the time, you know? My body tells me it wants to play, and I follow!

I just can’t begin to describe the difference. My health has far surpassed the condition it has ever been in for as far back as I can remember. I have experienced improvements in my energy, vitality, abilities, attitude, and appearance that I never even imagined were possible. I don’t get so worn out at the end of the day anymore, and I sleep much more restfully. I have a new level of joy in my life, and I experience daily the plain enjoyment of being alive. I’m feeling less shy and more adventurous socially as well, so I’m more outgoing.

I love reading what she writes, it gives me such a vision & goal for why I am doing this, and it's not just to lose weight and "look better". I mean, anyone can lose weight on just about any diet & exercise routine if they're dedicated enough - and I think that is why people look at eating raw to be so extreme.

I mean, why would you go to such extreme lengths to lose weight? Why not just do it the "normal" way such as South Beach or just plain & simple eating lots of salads and chicken breasts with whole-grain rice, lots of veggies & fruits, etc? But eating raw goes far beyond that, almost to the way we were meant to feel when God made us in the Garden of Eden. We take everyday symptoms for granted because that's what we're used to, but I don't think we were meant to have all these aches & pains, ailments, problems, etc. They're a result of the way that we live, including our food choices, lack of exercise, pollution, unhealthy drinking water, limited access to sunshine, fresh air, etc.

It's an interesting subject. So actually, my goal is not to lose weight exclusively. It is to literally be glowing with health, and feeling like I'm glowing with health - so that I experience the whole picture and not just to be someone who is skinny. You can certainly be skinny/thin/have a good body/whatever - yet feel like something is not right inside. There are rail thin people who can eat whatever they want, Twinkies all day long and not gain weight. Yet you know that inside their body is struggling to survive. This is what I have to remember when I'm tempted to just binge on a whole pack of peanut butter M&M's (Yes, you're not the only one who is tempted &/or has done that, LOL!).

I was asked this question by R&A:

"How does it work, you just eat 1 or 2 bananas at a time and come back in a while when you're hungry again?"

The book 80-10-10 recommends doing that in the beginning, but striving as much as possible to shoot for three bigger meals per day. So keeping that in mind, I try to fill up completely on whatever fruit I am eating instead of just snacking. Dr. Doug says the best for digestion is limiting your meals to no more than 3 fruit combinations, so I've been trying to (but not limiting myself to) do that. So for instance, I just had breakfast as I was typing this up. It consisted of 8 bananas over the course of the 45 min. or so I've been on the computer. I love how simple it is!!!!! As I was about halfway done with the last banana, I felt this sort of trigger thing going on in my stomach: that's enough. If I were to eat more, I would get nauseous. I think it's very hard to overeat when you eat mono meals (meals consisting of just one fruit) . So I finished and that was my meal.

My next meal usually is OJ - so I'll juice 8 oranges and that will be my next meal. As long as it lasts me a good 2 hours before I get hungry again, I call it a "meal". But like last night, I had 15 dates while I was watching a movie - that definitely wasn't a meal, but it was kind of like a snack I guess.

My food yesterday as logged into http://www.fitday.com/:

16 oranges, juiced
1.5lb of red seedless grapes
15 dates
6 bananas

Calories: 2325
Carbs/Protein/Fat: 90/6/4

Hey - I weighed in at 140.6 this morning! I can't wait to see the good 'ol 139# appear...soon, hopefully! (starting weight was 143, so 3lbs down in 5 days)