Days Six through Ten

As Day 10 draws to a close, I can look back and feel pretty good about my progress!  I am excited to report that I have lost about 8 pounds and several inches around my waist and hips.  Yeah!  Perhaps an even bigger feat was that I followed the meal plan.  Of course, as I predicted my weekend was the biggest challenge.  It was challenging, though, in a surprising way.  I found that I didn't want to snack at all.  I stayed so busy moving so that I didn't think about food that I missed my snacks!  This led to me wanting more salad at mealtime, which I allowed myself.  I struggled with not being able to eat my normal celebratory foods on Sunday, but "cheated" in a new and different way:  I allowed myself to cheat by adding glazed pecans to a salad and adding a small amount of salad dressing to my meals.  I also allowed myself to have one Diet Pepsi.  This type of cheating contained any damage control (instead of eating a box of mac-n-cheese!), but gave me a chance to mentally feel rewarded.  In terms of exercise, I have worked out 5 days a week, alternating between the elliptical machine, the rower, and the stationary incumbent bike.  Motivating myself to go sweat it out has been challenging, but I always feel good afterwards.  Now on to the next hurdle:  days 11 -24.  While my diet "eases up" a bit, I really don't feel so deprived there.  In fact, I may just keep trying to eat this way by keeping breads, pastas, and dairy to a minimum.  I feel fine this way, and surprisingly haven't missed my beige food group as much as I thought!  Time to pull my Advocare vitamins out of the box and gear up.  One side note:  the Catalyst capsules from Advocare seem to make my workout even better.  Not sure how that works, but I like it!  Here we go!!!