Upgrade One Thing a Time

We gave the Clean Program (past blog) a try for 5 days a few weeks ago. I loved the experiment and the challenge. Half way through, I was missing quinoa and oatmeal smelled delicious. After the 5 days, we added back one thing at a time that we were missing. Quinoa, almond butter, dark chocolate and a glass of wine were the foods that I brought back in and spaced out over four days.

What if you attempted a program like this and you didn’t lose weight or feel better? Would you give up and go back to your old habits? Or would you take one thing you learned and apply it to your lifestyle?

Your mental well being is so important when you are experimenting with different programs, plans and formulas. Always observe what you are resisting and look at the why. Many programs state it takes 21 days to make change. To create conscious lifestyle changes it may take up to 3 months while you focus on one thing at a time to add or replace the habits that are not supporting you.

During the Clean week, I noticed a day when I needed emotional comfort and kept wanting to escape from feeling the stress and grabbing food to cover up the emotion. Wow! How many times a day, week, year, do we do this without noticing?

Instead of eliminating everything at once, try some of these tactics to mentally & physically overcome using food or drink as escape:

Take away one or add one thing at a time each week. For example:

Week 1: Try to switch grabbing nuts as a snack to grabbing veggies or drink more water first than assess if you are truly hungry.
Week 2: Try taking away one comfort food that you use when feeling stressed. Then bring it back in after the week is up and notice you have a healthier relationship with this crutch.
Week 3: Try taking 5 deep breaths and drink water from a glass before you make your tea or coffee and notice if you feel more relaxed starting the day.
Week 4: Try eating a smaller portion for dinner and notice if you feel hungrier the next day.

If you have any other ideas, please share! If you want to try experimenting with us, we have another RESET Program beginning April 13th!

Keep it simple,
Heather Fleming, C.C.N

Photo by: Michael Coghlan