Day 7!!!

YEA! Only 3 more days left of my herbal cleanse! Today was a good day. I started the day out with spark and my probiotic. Then for breakfast 30 minutes later, I had a meal replacement shake, and I think I had a few strawberries too before I headed to church, as a snack to tide me over til church was over. I took catalyst before lunch. I've been forgetting my catalyst the past couple of days and not taking as much of it. Lunch was the usual veggie soup. My afternoon snack was a banana. Occasionally throughout the day also, I have a few "Nut Thins", a cracker that my in-laws always buy, and I "think" they fit the criteria for the herbal cleanse, so I will always grab a handful when I just need a little something crunchy. they are wheat and gluten free. I like the pecan ones. I really didn't drag any this afternoon, but I still drank a spark to make sure I'd be energized for the rest of the day.

Tonight, we made some more chicken, better chicken! :) It was the 30 minute chicken (a whole chicken) done in the Pampered Chef deep covered baker, much juicier than the grilled chicken. It makes juice too that I can pour over my brown rice so it's not so dry. I don't eat the skin of the chicken. I think it's a pretty healthy version of chicken. :)

Tonight after dinner, my family went swimming so that was my exercise for the day. I swam around using a noodle making sure that my legs were always moving.

Today, I kept thinking about why I love Advocare so much and how I can survive doing the herbal cleanse. Wanna know why? I'm going to tell you-lol. I LOVE to eat! It's ingrained in me, my family, we live for when we travel to go to super cool, local restaurants, always looking for new good places to eat. :) There is no way I could give up eating good food for all my life. Advocare allows me to eat and to enjoy eating. Doing the herbal cleanse and the 24 day challenge helps curb my cravings, so I make better choices. Then when there's something bad I want, I either only eat a little or sometimes the craving goes away. I think that's so awesome, because I still get to eat all the good food! I get to enjoy going to good restaurants or making good recipes at home. But I believe Advocare has helped me to realize all the processed snacks that used to seem so good, aren't good for you, they're bad for you, worse than a good homemade chocolate dessert. I actually can't stand most processed snacks these days, I feel yucky when I eat them. But I do LOVE Mexican food, and yeah I know it's got lots of fat and cheese and stuff in it, but I don't eat it daily, but I get to enjoy it and I don't suffer because of it.

I've also learned portion control. Nowadays in our family, my husband and I use salad plates instead of dinner sized plates. I truly think it helps me manage my portions. Try it! It really works! Now if we were having a multi dish meal with lots of different options one day, I might use a dinner plate, but the things we make and eat for dinner fit really well on a salad plate and it keeps our portions under control.

I think Advocare has helped me to learn to make better choices of what to eat and to manage my portions. I'm willing to be miserable for 10 days on my Herbal Cleanse to really clean my body out of junk, then when the 10 days is up, I go back to eating regularly but I don't go crazy.