Healthy Choices

I've come to the end of my nutritional experiment. This 30-day journey to test out products and potentially adjust my outlook towards food, portions and fueling for endurance events has come to a close. While I've decided not to continue using the products, I will say that these 30 days have shown me some things that I already knew, but had forgotten. In a way, I feel bad that I had to spend quite a bit of money to remind myself of these things but every once and a while, the mind (and body) needs to be reset.

The Basics
It was simple. Shake for breakfast. Shake for lunch. Sensible (400-600 calorie) meal for dinner. Oh, and lots of water. Every day. But then every 5th day, just don't eat for 24-hours (it's a cleanse day, they call it).

How's it Taste?
Are the shakes good? They're ok. You have to dress them up a little, but then that adds calories. This was fine for me given I was running every morning and easily calorie deficient even after a shake with banana, peanut butter and almond milk. Most mornings I would even have a small cup of yogurt, fruit or toast on top of the shake.

What Else?
There are vitamins and other supplements that have a gillion ingredients in them - who knows whether they're good for you. They have protein bars (as meal replacements), but let's be honest, I've never gotten filled up by a stinking bar regardless of how many grams of protein it has.

What Did I Learn?
Several things in fact...

1. Health is a lifestyle, not a diet or any number of pills. Many of us know how to make good choices but find reasons and justifications to 'just this once' eat poorly.
2. Food is fuel. But you're probably eating too much. I was overeating and justifying it with my running.
3. You don't need a product to lose weight or relieve yourself of weight-related ailments. If you follow the above lessons and consume fewer calories per day, you're bound to lose inches, pounds and eliminate weight-related medications.

Like I said, these aren't revelations for me and my family. Just things we've strayed from more often than we should. The program wasn't for me/us - we have taken away some valuable information and will incorporate them into our lifestyle.

If you'd like more information about the program we tried I'm happy to share more details via email. Contact me at rovert.d@gmail.com.

Be healthy my friends!