Finding The Balance

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle change is never easy. True success is measured not by how much weight you lose but how long you are able to maintain the loss. It is so easy to fall right back into bad habits after achieving the “goal”. At the moment I am in the place where I am working on maintaining my 50 plus pound weight loss. And I must admit - it ain’t easy. Between injury and wanting to eat tons of carbs I am challenged on a daily basis.

When I got on the scale the morning it read 155 pounds. 3 pounds heavier than my 50 pound loss and 6 pounds heavier than my lowest weight during the past 4 weeks of 149 pounds. I realize that I have to work on doing things to maintain my weight and have been sloppy about it. I did the Clean program detox for 3 weeks and it was great! Overall I lost 15 pounds (obviously I had briefly gained weight in early August) and got to 149. But last Monday as soon as the detox was over I fell into old habits. Specifically not eating enough which as you probably know, wreaks havoc on the metabolism.

Couple that with the inability to exercise, my refusal to drink water the way I’m supposed to and wham! 5 pounds gained. The weight gain isn’t making me crazy but it is motivating me to find a way to keep everything balanced. After my face broke out last week I realized that I have to stay on a Clean diet. No diary, gluten, wheat, soy and extremely limited sugar because doing anything negatively affects me.

My face broke out like crazy last week and of course my hip pain came back after 3 weeks of relatively pain free running on a regular basis. Because of my experience, I’ve come to some conclusions that I hope will help you too:

• I must drink water at least 8 glasses daily to feel good
• I must limit sweets my skin cannot handle it
• Wheat/gluten are not my friends and they cause inflammation the keeps me from exercising and training for my half-marathon
• Meal planning is essential. If I don’t plan my meals I won’t eat enough - fruits, veggies and protein. My metabolism slows and I hold on to weight
• Although healthy eating may cost a little more than eating the usual suspects, my health is worth and it will keep me from incurring hefty doctor bills in the future.

I am committed to eating Clean. My body loves me for it and I am not ready to ignore the negative effects of eating foods that my body does not respond well too. I have been experimenting with wheat and gluten free recipes. On Friday I made a pesto pizza that was delicious! I used millet flour for the crust. Basil, sunflower seeds, cashews and olive oil for the pesto. It was so good and easy to make!

I also made pancakes but that did  not work out so well, I tried using millet again and clearly that is not a good flour for pancakes. Too crumbly and not tasty when cooked on the griddle for some reason. So bad in fact, I thought maybe there was soap residue on my griddle and I rewashed it. But the pancakes were still nasty. Yesterday I went to the grocery store and picked up WF/GF flour the pancakes this morning were great!

I also have been making a pad thai type of dish - I didn’t have pad thai rice noodles so I used quinoa instead. I made that two nights in a row. Loved it! But as you can see, my meals have been very carb heavy so with meal planning I hope to remedy it. Clean eating doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to maintain my loss if I eat too much of a good thing!

So, I continue on my journey - sharing my successes and failures with you. Hopefully we will grow from this experience together! 

Disclosure: I received the Clean detox program and book for purposes of review but that did not influence my opinions.