Thrifty Little Mom Life Week 2
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Greetings! This is the second week of Thrifty Little Mom Life where I give you a glance at my real life behind the blog. This week as many of you may know I decided to try the 21 Day Fix. This is genuinely me deciding to do something healthy and I’m not being sponsored or paid by Beachbody to this little… “experiment”. Today you’ll find out exactly how my first 3 days went and what I think of the program.
I’ve probably tried every single diet that exists and one of my major personal hangups is that I’m an extreme kind of person. In that extreme state I typically think a little…irrationally.
For example, when I was in high school I started running cross country. If I walked at any point during a race, then I couldn’t say I had “run” a race. It was like I was a quitter in my mind. Even if I finished it. I KNOW! Totally irrational.
So even though I would love to do the Whole 30 as I mentioned in last weeks note in an attempt to eliminate lots of junk from my diet, I would literally go overboard with a very all or nothing attitude. Fully Whole 30 or why even continue? If I could change that about myself I would but it’s easier just to find something not so extreme. So that why when I Googled the 21 Day Fix after seeing it hash-tagged several times in social media and saw the system I was REALLY intrigued because it seemed like something that I could TOTALLY do and was actually a balanced way of eating for me.
What I Ordered
Here’s what I ordered from Amazon:Beachbody’s The Portion Fix – Portion Control Containers with Guide
for right around $50.
What I Didn’t Order
What you see above is not considered the whole program, it’s just the food potion. The whole kit comes with workout CD’s a few other extra’s and I think it costs around $75. They encourage you to exercise 30 minutes per day! I work out each day at the YMCA because they have free childcare and didn’t feel that I needed anymore workout DVD’s gathering dust on the entertainment center. So I just chose to focus on the dietary part because exercise isn’t such and issue for me. I want to learn about eating in a healthy and balanced way so I can feel good, have more energy and reduce my risk for disease.
What I Like So Far
In this plan you decide what caloric level you should be following based on a really super simple math equation that they have you do in the little book. Then, they tell you what food items go into the colored containers pretty much by food group and how many containers you can eat in one day based on your caloric needs. I hate math so this is perfect.
I’m totally digging this because I also loathe counting calories in a journal (as a teen I was obese and lost all my weight counting calories over a 4 year period and counted calories every day of that 4 years and now I’m just over it). This plan literally tells be what food can go into the containers, I put in the cup, dump the cup and eat it. I seriously haven’t even really thought about food in 3 days. That’s a big change for me. When I say thought about food, I mean obsess over it. I haven’t felt bad, lazy or self conscious about my food choices. I’m just eating healthy and I feel good.
I am using the printable tally sheets that are free from the Beachbody site just to keep track of how many containers I’ve had that day. At the end of the day I’m putting about 10 marks on a sheet of paper an that’s it. That’s the extent of the math or journaling involved.
I can have chocolate chip oatmeal cookies! Well, they are from a very clean recipe in the book included in the kit but they are tasty and help me not feel deprived. That little bit of balance keeps me in check.
I can have coffee. I don’t think I need to elaborate.
My Week 1 Results
I went ahead and had my hubby take a before picture because at the end of the day I know I like to SEE the change people talk about and not just read about it or hear about it.
I’ve been doing this for 3 days and have lost exactly 3 pounds.
I will post my results in next Saturday’s Thrifty Little Mom Life Post and will continue each Saturday for the next 3 weeks.
The only challenges I’ve faces so far is getting in enough water. That’s going to be a high priority going into this week.
Life Outside the 21 Day Fix
Putting my son in half day preschool a few days a week is proving to be really good for me and my ability to focus on the blog while he’s at school and then on my cleaning routine and him when he’s home. I’m learning that whole work-life integration thing day by day. Working from home sounds so amazing until you realize how quickly the lines between work and life get blurred when your office is in the middle of your home life.
Our garden veggies are starting to come in faster than I can cook them so be on the lookout for some serious garden veggie recipes in the next few weeks. My son ripped out one of the broccoli plants but my husband will recover…eventually.
We went to the $1 Summer Movie Club at Regal and saw How to Train Your Dragon 2. The previous time we went I let him bring his Jake and The Neverland Pirates Characters and I spent 10 minutes after the movie on my hands and knees feeling around the floor in the dark sticking my hands in all kinds of sticky junk to find the lost Cubby. Lesson learned. Now we take only one large stuffed character in with us.
My old O-Cedar ProMist Microfiber Spray Mop
died after 5 years so I had to get a new one. If you’re the kind of person who loves to quickly clean your floors but you hate those mops with expensive pads and refills, you have to see these thrifty little mops. You can fill the container with any kind of cleaner you want including vinegar and the cleaning pads can be reused up to 50 times just by throwing them in your washing machine!
One thing we’ve been doing in the evenings to wear the kid out is go to the YMCA pool. It’s usually open until after 9 so we have plenty of time to go once my husband gets off work. The big benefit? There is a jacuzzi tub. I typically disappear every 30 minutes or so… you know to give them some daddy-son bonding time.
So there is a pretty good overview of a week in my life! Hope to see you back here next Saturday as I report the results of a full week trying to change my eating habits with 21 Day Fix!
If you enjoyed reading this here are a couple of other posts that might interest you from Thrifty Little Mom.
Kim Anderson is the organized chaos loving author behind the Thrifty Little Mom Blog. She helps other people who thrive in organized chaos to stress less, remember more and feel in control of their time, money, and home. Kim is the author of: Live, Save, Spend, Repeat: The Life You Want with the Money You Have. She’s been featured on Time.com, Money.com, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Day, and more!