In the past I've done the following diets all with moderate, but short term, success: South Beach, The Abs Diet, Weight Watchers, various Spark People plans, and a combination low calorie/insane workout plan created by me so you know it was totally legit. All of these worked in the sense that I dropped about five pounds, maybe ten if I stuck to it for more than two weeks, but in the long term I abandoned ship and gained back more than I lost. I'm not saying those aren't all good diets that can produce real lasting results, hell I'm back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon, but in my case I wasn't mentally ready to diet. Food still ruled this roost and if you're going to have any kind of success that just can't be the case.
After I had Truman I knew there was a very good chance we would have a second kid so why bother to lose any weight (shut up, my logic is flawless). I managed to not put on a lot of weight while pregnant with Pippa (thanks never ending morning sickness!) but once she came out and my hormones went batshit crazy, I ate everything in sight. Seriously, ask jparks, I was a crying mess with tears and chocolate permanently smeared across my face. Once the haze cleared and I got a good look at what I had let myself become I was mad and disappointed. Had I really given up all hope of fitting into my clothes and just bought new ones? Yes. Had I decided that cookies all day long were a good thing? Yes. Had I really let myself get so big that running hurt my knees when that had never been an issue before? Yes.
Once I realized all of that I knew that for the first time I was ready to diet. I was ready to watch the number on the scale drop, ready to pull out all my favorite jeans again, ready to be healthy.
Now here's where I admit that as hormonal crazy as I went post partum, I went just about that crazy this month with diets. First I started a three day juice cleanse on the 10th. Yup, I celebrated my 32nd birthday with a big bottle of beet juice. I don't know how much I buy into the idea of detoxing your body because there was no way I was going to get a colonic; the reason I did the cleanse was to learn how to use my willpower and that I was capable of saying no to things. Because it turns out that what my mind wants (salted caramel nutella brownies and peanut butter sheet cake) are not the same as what my body wants (lean protein and kale). Those three days of juice, juice, and more juice was so shockingly easy that when I opened my last bottle of cashew milk I wished I had opted for a five day cleanse instead of a three. Trust me, I was shocked that I thought that and not "bring me a steak dripping with butter!"
I won't bore you with all the cleanse details, but if you're interested leave me a comment and I'll email you more info about it (trust me, I can talk your ear off regarding this juice cleanse). Not to be overly cheesy but I learned a lot about myself in those three days and that has helped me lay an incredibly solid foundation for the next step of my diet, a 21 day meal plan from Snap Kitchen...
