I’m sure you’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule…you try to eat right and make healthy choices 80% of the time and then 20% of the time is more for splurging…giving in to the not so healthy stuff. This is exactly what I’m going for. I’ve lost right at 20 pounds in the last year completely by changing what I eat. I started with the Optavia diet (no I don’t sell this…just genuinely believe in it but I do know someone who can hook you up if you’re interested in learning more) and had great success losing about 10 pounds in two weeks. This was exactly the jump start I needed. Since then I have slowly a pound at a time lost the last 10. And…I wish people could understand how easy this has seriously been. So much of how we let food control our lives is just in our heads…and if you can just start with one healthy choice, it leads to another and another. Here are just a couple of the healthy things I have incorporated that have made such a big difference. I seriously have more energy right now that I have had in years and that is with me having THREE kids to chase! I need this energy.
1) Juice Plus…it’s amazing. I love knowing that I’m getting all of the healthy fruits and vegetables and berries in my family every day! We have been so much healthier too. I know not everyone believes in this but the Morton house does! Also…FYI if you’re interested in learning more about this, I can gladly point you towards an expert! 😉
2) Stop drinking soda and sugar drinks…and that includes diet (actually it especially means diet…aspartame is SOOOOO bad).THIS IS HARD…and I know that but it is so important and if you can just get past the hard first few weeks it becomes so easy after that. I drink one cup of coffee each morning and this either has a teaspoon of creamer or a little bit of almond milk and one teaspoon of sugar. Otherwise, all I drink is water and A LOT of it. If you can just beat the addiction the first few weeks (mine was to sweet tea and a little bit of Dr. Pepper) you can totally do it! Now…keep in mind the 80/20 rule…if I’m in the city or have had an especially hard day, I will randomly get a “good” coffee…you know the 500 calorie kind! Or if we’re at a BBQ or gathering…I will still indulge in a sweet tea every now and then. I just don’t do this daily or even weekly for that matter.
3) Eat small amounts constantly through the day. I eat probably every two hours right now…but I’m eating small amounts and these are healthy choices. Most days I have some combination of about 4 of the following: cheese stick, apple with almond butter, oatmeal, a pear, pistachios, cherry tomatoes, almonds and protein shakes. Keep in mind I said during the day…at night I do eat a normal “real” supper with my family.
4) Stop adding a bread to every supper. I LOVE BREAD…this bares repeating. I REALLY love bread! I’m not going no carb or even real low carb of an evening but in the past we would have an actual bread with every dinner…crescent rolls, garlic bread, garlic knots, regular rolls, biscuits. Now we have one of these probably every two weeks. I still love them but just not having them in front of us every day makes it easy to obviously not have them. If they are in front of me, I’m eating them. So…I just don’t put them in front of us.
5) Cut back on sweets. Please notice I said back not out on sweets. Why must dessert be so amazing?!? I seriously want something sweet every night after dinner…so I’ve had to be creative. I’ve bought the snack size York Peppermint Patties and 2 of them are 100 calories. These totally fix my sweet tooth! Also we do the Juice Plus gummies at my house rather than the capsules and I can convince myself these are a sweet too…basically fruit snacks and I do love fruit snacks! We still go to Lix Frozen Custard (because we made the mistake of building a house that requires us to drive right by it everyday) but now I either get the kiddie size or a small. That’s better than the medium I used to get.
I don’t want to not live life and be over the top careful about everything I’m putting in my mouth…but I do want to be healthier and I’ve just figured out that these are all easy things for me to change and they are working! I don’t miss those 20 pounds a bit!