30 Day Challenge FINALE!

Thank you to all of you faithful followers! I am sooooo late on posting the results. Thinking I needed to have a picture has held me up, so I decided to go ahead and post without.

Anyway, I completed the 30 day challenge on Tuesday night with a weight loss total of 13 pounds. I was thrilled with that number and although the first 8 came off real quick, I had to fight for the the last 5.

WARNING: TMI ahead.....

About 7 days before the challenge ended, I began adding some really great yogurt to my smoothies. By really great I mean yogurt with some really good bacteria that isn't found in all yogurt and organic besides. 3 days after I began the yogurt....I had a breakthrough in the bowel area if you know what I mean. No, I don't mean constant diarrhea. I just mean big, healthy, nice and soft stools. And several each day. Over the course of the last days, I dropped the remaining 5 lbs. Sooooo....I chalk it up to some much needed bacteria being put back into my digestive system. Grossed out yet?

If you read my initial 30 day challenge entry, you may remember the 3 major "Why I am doing this Challenge." For those just joining, they are for the following:

1. Physical Health
2. Emotional Health
3. Spiritual Health

So as a summation of the 30 day challenge, I will address how this challenge has affected each of these areas.

1. Physical: The obvious weightloss. And I do have a lot more energy without those sluggish downtimes after meals I used to get when I would eat a lot of carbs and animal protein. My complexion is doing well (although the monthly flair-up has not yet been eliminated). I still have swollen sore joints in my hands although I did have a few days where I didn't. I've been sleeping well at night. I haven't gotten that dizzy, anemic feeling all month.

2. Emotionally: Like I have mentioned in blogs past, I don't feel as addicted to food as I did prior to this challenge. I'm not constantly searching for the next sugar fix or planning my day to make sure I have sugar available at all costs. The down side is seeing the sugar addiction in my children and so many Americans, but will continue to introduce better choices where and when I can control this aspect. (More on Emotional to follow below)

3. Spiritually: The 30 day challenge, at times, has reminded me of past periods of fasting I have done for spiritual reasons. Although this wasn't the purpose of this challenge, I found myself relying on God with every hunger pain and craving. Sometimes I gave in, and sometimes I relied on the strength He gave me to get through. I had originally said the spiritual reason I wanted to change my eating habits is so I would be able to fast on a regular basis without major health problems each time. It just so happens that a man in our community became very sick the last week of this challenge and the day after the challenge ended I was compeled to fast for the day for this situation. I was able to drink only water until 6pm that night when I broke the fast. I didn't lose energy, or have dizziness, or headache. Praise be to God.

As I mentioned in a few blogs back, I was contemplating starting a round of HCG. I decided to take the day of fasting and then begin the HCG the next day. If you are familiar with HCG, you have 2 full days of gorging on anything and everything you want with an emphasis on lots of fat. I know, I don't like the sound of it either...but when I did HCG before, I didn't gorge as much as I should and ended up starving the entire time and not really completing the protocol to the end. Soooo....let's just say I went to bed with a stomache the 2nd night of gorging. I basically ate everything in those 2 days that I had wanted to eat in 30. I wasn't even hungry for it and had to force myself to eat a lot of it (I have a friend to vouge for this...she was there). This is when I noticed the EMOTIONAL effects of the crappy food. I had a Burger, Cheeseballs, and a Hot Fudge shake from the local Valley Drive-In dripping with grease. An hour later, I was so incredibly grouchy I couldn't even talk myself into a good mood. This happened while my friend and I were cleaning the church (we do this the same day every week). The mood brought back to mind all of the other cleaning days I had the same feeling and realized I hadn't had that funky mood for several weeks. Soooo....I attribute it to the SAD (Standard American Diet) I was consuming previous to this 30 day challenge.

Where do I go from here?

Well, for the next 30 days I will be taking HCG drops and sticking to the 500 calorie per day diet. After that I plan to continue as much RAW food as possible. I have ordered the book "80/10/10 Diet" by Dr. Graham and plan to read and psych myself up again. Thank you everyone for joining me in the journey and for your encouraging words along the way.