MC 2025: Day 10

9 days 10 and lost about 4kgs. I’ve created a tracker here

This is easy and tough at the same time huh..

Easy because its simple, you squeeze your lemons in the morning that make 9 servings, and sip that throughout the day. No fuss no muss.. no plates, no cooking, not a lot of mess and dishes to take care of. AND at the end of it, you know you will be losing 1lb per day. Btw how is that? Its been that amount of weight loss per day, inspite of age or activity level??

Ive done the cleanse several times before, and ive been active this time, keeping up with my usual exercises and activities for the past 10 days. And yet, the weight lost is 1lb per day.

Difficult because you miss the taste of food. The texture, the flavor and the variety. It doesn’t help that my sense of smell got better from Day 3! I can smell everything! Even lettuce from the next table (shamefully enough I didn’t recognize that smell was from lettuce leaves :D).

Right now Im on Day 10, and Im just craving for fried food! Fried chicken.. French fries.. etc.. I know Im not really hungry. I haven’t felt real hunger yet so I know this is me, just craving the things I used to eat.

Im also surprised that I can keep up with the pilates. On  my first week, I went to 3 intermediate pilates classes and did about 20mins on the stairmaster, plus 2 sauna sessions I think. This is mostly my routine on my pre-cleanse time. No wonder I wasn’t losing weight.

Yesterday, I felt it. How better I moved in the pilates class. I felt lighter and more flexible? No.. more in flow. Or maybe the class was just easier? Lets wait for Dana to come back on Monday and will see how it is. But I do feel better.. and I love it! I don’t want to lose this feeling.. the feeling of finally progressing in your practice.

After pilates, I went for an incline walk on the treadmill for 30 mins. Tbh.. to meet my step count (which still fell short :D). This one I felt out of breath.. similar to the stairmaster… I find that one much difficult than my pre-cleanse days.

Whenever the temptation creeps in.. whether from craving or boredom, I just pull these out:

• the goal look in mind and I really get into it – i.e. think about what I would wear on Day 35, how I would look, and that simple flex on IG stories.. hey, im only human, and plus i want to stick it to someone.. hmp!
• Reason that its just food, and it will still be there after I finish easing out – and that too food in South Africa! I will be travelling soon
• Think that there are temptations everyday, If I keep giving in, then I wont get anywhere. That same temptation will be there the next day and the next etc.
• Occupy my mind by planning on how to hit my protein targets once Im off cleanse and travelling, I don’t want to gain it all back. This one really a bit of a worry. Not the protein part, the carbs part. Im guessing we will be heavy on meats the whole 3 weeks.. its just the pairing that needs to be sorted

Week 2 in, lets see how I finish this week. I hope I get down by at least 7kgs down by after Day 14, which is on Monday morning.

Day 73: Time spent but not wasted

Or is it?

It’s been two weeks since I wrote and I think it has been almost a month that I’ve been struggling to be deviation free. There were days that I was good but yet I failed in the evenings and there were other days that I wasn’t on plan at all, whether it’s not eating at all then having whatever is available to totally eating out of plan.

Anyway, today marks the first day of being deviation free. I thought of continuing the number of days because this time I think I’m just going to go ahead with it, than “starting over” on e-paper (mind tricks eh?).

I mostly occupy my free time (morning and evening drives) listening to a book called the Values Factor by John Demartini. Very insightful, a lot of aha moments, and a lot of work in order to get your values and priorities sorted and aligned in all aspects. I’m just listening to it, I haven’t done all exercises, because this will need some time. It’s like a proper course! :D But given that I haven’t done any of the work yet, I have learned so much already.

I don’t know what else to say. I have wasted my time in terms of reaching goal, but not really much so. I had a life going on – meeting with friends, going out with my bf, networking. It’s not all bad. It is bad for Cohen goal but I have to see the positives of it than beating myself up over it. I’m tired of that.

Today wasn’t particularly easy, I was craving for chocolates like anything. I don’t understand it. I had to google why and it all has to do with the rewards mechanism that we have in our brains, as eating delicious chocolates that releases the happy hormone dopamine. I also found out that we didn’t have to learn to like chocolates, as soon as our brain recognizes the benefit, it acquires that automatically and the brain gets hardwired to it. Phew.

Next, I googled how to beat the chocolate cravings. Tons of advice – i.e. eat a healthy sweet like fruits, talk a walk and then see if you still want one, negotiate with yourself, have a few squares (hah! We all know how’s that going to go), switch to dark. Thing is, I know all of these, but I still have chocolates in my mind. I’m not craving for anything sweet, I am particularly looking for chocolates. I don’t know what kept me going, but I survived today.

I started with Pilates too. I had my first class yesterday (Reformer Core), I liked it. I was booked for the same today but I missed it as I have to work late, and I took the Pilates SQ, it’s a step higher than the basic one to which I did fairly well, the instructor said so, that for a beginner, I was good. I like Pilates. I 've always wanted to do it for as long as I can remember, the proper ones, but it was just way too expensive for me (it still is). I have 5 trial class which the cost works ok for me, that’s why I went for it.

Anyhoo, that’s all for now and tomorrow I will brave a reconciliation with Wilma (my online consultant).

Day 73: deviation free. 1 cracker under allowance. Vits taken, no DC

Mood = ok

Hunger = craving for chocolate, but not hungry for food.