Advocare: The good, the bad, the ugly.

Day 1 of the 24 day challenge: I am really excited to start the challenge. I woke up early this morning because I wasn't sure how my body would react to the Fiber drink. All in all, I'm glad I got up early. I followed the challenge exactly as said in the booklet. No cheating. I'm hungry, I'm grumpy, and my tummy hurts. If this is how it's going to be I am not excited about it. I went to the gym and I worked out for an hour. That's all I could manage. I could not do how much I normally do. Exhausted.

Day 2: Got up early again. I'm so tired and my body hurts. The fiber drink doesn't taste as bad as people say it does, but I got the peaches and cream. It makes me really bloated and I hate that. I'm still hungry and I'm not sure how to cook things to make them taste good so I just eat a lot of plain and bland meals. Boring. Not sure how these 24 days are going to go. I feel horrible and nauseated so I'm not going to the gym. I just don't think I can make it through.

Day 3: DEAR GOD I FEEL AWFUL. I have the worst heartburn that I have ever experienced and nothing is helping. I cannot imagine doing this for much longer. I feel sick to my stomach, but I'm not hungry at all. I cannot imagine eating food right now. I can't even chug enough water to take my Catalyst. I'm going to bed early. My whole body hurts as if I've been working out all day but I haven't moved much. I can't do this for much longer, honestly. Maybe I need to eat more.

Day 4: I don't know what's going on but I woke up feeling so much better! I have energy, and I don't feel sick! I made eggs for breakfast and had a lot of fruit to go with it. I don't have heartburn but I've been keeping up with all of my snacks and I feel satisfied. I finally found another blog of people who have been doing this whole advocare thing and they say that days 1-3 are the worst. I guess I was feeling the same thing. I'm totally going to the gym today!

Days 5-9: Boring. I'm bored with the food and I'm ready to be off of this cleanse. I have noticed that my clothes are fitting differently and people are telling me that I am smaller!

Day 10: Big weigh in day! I have lost 7 lbs so far and 14.75 inches down! The cleanse wasn't so bad and I can already see myself purchasing it again for the extra cleansing. I wish we could eat more, but that is probably me being scared of ruining the $300 that I spent by cheating. Plus, I hadn't been doing as much research as I probably should have and I wasn't so sure of what I could eat.

Days 11-19: I have been able to eat a lot more. I'm eating every 2 hours but I have also done a lot more research. I can also eat dairy products again, which makes me incredibly happy. I know what I can eat and I have found hundreds of recipes that I can use to cook! I'm not hungry at all anymore and I love the breakfast shakes. I mix mine with berries every morning. It is delicious! These little green pills for the MNS 3 make me want to throw up but I am pulling my pants up all the time! I'm thoroughly impressed with this!

Tomorrow is day 20 and I'm feeling more pressure to buy more. I am so impressed with how well this challenge has worked that I wanted to continue with the products.

The challenge is hard. Eating out is so social and it's mainly what my friends and I have already done.  I have pretty much isolated myself and I haven't gone out in 20 days, which is quite a stretch for me. I'm ready to go out and have a good night with my friends, but I'm not craving any outrageous foods. I did, however, give up chocolate for Lent this year and I have not had chocolate for years. I want nothing more than to eat all of my Easter candy!

I'll update when I'm done with the rest of the challenge!

The beginning...

I knew I had been gaining weight. I knew it when I looked in the mirror and I knew it when I put on my clothes. I was a full time graduate student and I worked two other jobs. There was no time to cook and when there was time, I was studying or sleeping.

People told me: "Quit making excuses." "There is always time. You just have to make it." "You just aren't dedicated enough." I have heard it all. Did I listen? 

No. 

I was happy. I had a beautiful group of friends and we bonded over meals in the office at 3 am and over going to Walmart at midnight to buy more chocolate to keep us awake for finals and lesson planning and grading. 

Fast forward a year and a half and I graduated with my Master's degree and found a job teaching. Can we just pause here for a moment and say HOLY CRAP! I had NO IDEA how much work teaching was. In school, it just looked like teachers sat behind a desk while we did the hard work. Lesson plans, grading, professional learning, evaluations, preparing for observations, IEP meetings, documentation... My mind was blown. I felt like I was always behind with a million things to do. I had goals in the back of my head that I wanted to get healthy and start eating better. However, I failed as a first year teacher and I ran to the vending machine to grab a bag of chips for lunch or kept a dollar around to buy a candy bar from one of my kids just to tide me over. I always said: "I'll start next week and get serious." Did it happen?

No. 

Fast forward to January. I got serious. I joined the gym and started working hard. I ate healthy and enough. I had my gym buddy who held me accountable and I didn't have my first cheat day until March. On my first weigh in day,  my gym buddy had lost 21 pounds! She looked fantastic! I got on the scale and I felt so excited to see how far I had come!  My loss? Two measly pounds.

I got incredibly discouraged. I continued to work out but I did not care as much if I ate healthy. I mean, honestly. Three MONTHS and no big changes? Ridiculously frustrating.

Now we're talking summer time. Bathing suit? Absolutely not. I don't live far from Savannah so beach trips are inevitable. The feeling of being around your fit boyfriend and his friends while you're the beached whale on the beach? Horrible. 

So I got serious. 

I worked my butt off to lose weight. I spent my life on Pinterest searching for recipes, work outs, buying healthy food. I went to the doctor and he prescribed me Phentermine which I took for far too long and lost some weight on it. Then my body got used to it and I plateaued again with a total of 17 lbs gone. I did it for two more months by myself with NO weight loss and NO inches lost.

Now we're here. Present day. I started Advocare 17 days ago because a friend did it. She lost 6lbs and 12 inches, but she was already skinny. I'm glad that she felt better about herself, which is what she needed, but I didn't think much of it because she was fit, skinny, and healthy. I know this because I shared an office with her for two years and she is one of my best friends. She kept on and on and I got more and more frustrated with my inability to lose weight and I finally broke down. I surrendered and I spent $297.13 on this Advocare and committed. (I am the type of person who adheres to a program when I spend money on it. I am cheap.)

Before I decided to bite the bullet, I researched it for real reviews; not those fake reviews that people pay to have for their company and all I found were reviews from distributors who wanted to make money. I wanted real reviews from real people like me and that's what I'm going to give you: real results and real feelings. Everything I have felt for the past 17 days documented just for you, just in case you're looking to buy it or not.

So far?