As week one draws to a close – or the weekday part of it anyway – I thought I’d share some initial observations about how this “Busy Babe Sugar Cleanse” is going.
Meal prepping is hard! I have often thought of myself as an excellent time manager, multitasker, organizer but this is on a whole new level for me. Between prepping for our cleanse meals, preparing dinner for the kids, packing for our work day and making school lunches, my evenings are packed! Thankfully, my husband is doing his part and taxi-ing the kids to all their activities while I stay home and do all this. He is also the dishwasher (thank you, honey!). Still, I haven’t had much down time after work at all this week. By the time I get all that squared away, it’s shower time for my youngest, followed by bed, and then my middle child and I do our 20 minutes of reading homework. I’m lucky if I’m on the couch relaxing by 8:45! Some things I have learned that should help me in the subsequent weeks:
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- If steamed veggies are on the sugar cleanse dinner menu, make extra so it can be part of the kids’ dinner, too.
- Try to do double duty – put everything in the oven together, if you can; cut veggies up all at once for the various meals and let the Instant Pot handle the eggs and veggie steaming (we have 2, thank goodness).
- Put all the food in the fridge together so it’s easy for my husband and I to grab and go the next morning. I also prepackage the shake ingredients in snack sized bags to save time. I bring mine to work but it’s a time saver for my husband to just dump and blend.
- Look ahead in the meal plan. I didn’t really so I am not sure I made enough meat sauce for us to have it Saturday and will probably need to supplement.
- When logging your meals, take the easy route and copy from day to day. That saves a ton of time since there are a lot of ingredients to log.
- Consider adding a mid-week grocery trip to keep ingredients fresh and save room in your fridge.
- I made my own soup to add to the Lazy Bone Broth soup recipe but we got sick of it as the week went on. I ended up giving in and buying cartons of soup for next week.
- If you make your own bone broth on the weekend when you have time, it will last all week and it’s cheaper than buying jars of it at the store.
- Try to buy pre-cut vegetables, pre-made patties and whatever else you can buy that saves you time. It really does make a difference.
I’ve made my grocery list for next week already and I can see that it will not be as pricey as the first week. Some of our pantry items are still available, for one thing, which is a huge relief.
So, How Does the Food Taste?
Most of the recipes are terrific. The shakes are the bomb and my husband and I think we’ll continue to incorporate those long after the cleanse is over. We discovered, or I did anyway, that ground turkey is better than ground chicken in terms of taste. I hate sauerkraut and am afraid to try kimchi due to the heat. So, that is hard for me to stomach. Ditto on the greens shot. The greens powder that came recommended as best tasting has an Ok taste but leaves a smell in my nose that reminds me of vomit. There, I said it. It’s a rough introduction to my daily routine each day. I am not doing the ACV and water but my husband is. I haven’t done the fire shot either. I have a history of reflux and would just prefer to leave well enough alone.
What About the Cravings?
The first day I was pretty tired and headachy all day. The next day was MUCH better and days 3 and 4 have caffeine in Meal #1 shake which is a huge help. I’m feeling good and have wanted something sweet in the afternoon but I think it’s more due to habit than actually feeling like I NEED it. I nearly grabbed a piece of candy from the dish on the way out of a meeting the other day. Automatic! Thankfully, I stopped myself just in time. And this morning there was my favorite breakfast pizza in the office but I declined and was actually not that sad about it.
Weigh-In
I forgot to weigh myself and check my body composition at the beginning of the cleanse but the last weigh-in I did was 12/28/19 so close enough. I use the Renpho home scale and I have no idea how accurate it is but the trends are more what I pay attention to. You can see below what my current stats are (yes, I’m tiny!). My goal is to gain but I’m not actively bulking right now since I’m doing this cleanse. When the cleanse is completed, I’ll update you on what my next plans are.
I’ll keep monitoring and see how things progress. I don’t want to lose my gains. I predict a bit higher muscle mass at the end of week 2 (I hope!). Going into my first weekend on the cleanse. I’ll give a report Monday morning!