The "Clean Eating" Band Wagon.....

........I am officially on it. :)  It's been a really great week.  One thing that made it super easy was preparing all my food for the week last Saturday.  I prepared turkey muffins, salsa chicken, crock pot oatmeal, a lot of fruits and veggies easy to grab, boiled eggs, brown rice, barley, black beans, other things like unsweetened almond milk, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, etc.  I made everything last weekend. I now understand the importance of preparing your meals ahead of time, picking a day before the coming week and just doing it.  It helped so much and kept me on track all week.  I did have a cookie on Wednesday, eh, but what the heck.  I'm not super perfect! I don't I ever want to be super perfect with it, just pretty good at it. ;) I think a treat every now and again is okay. Once I get more in control and really good at the whole eating clean thing I will probably take a cheat meal once a week.  {My birthday is coming up next week...haha, I might start that whole cheat meal idea sooner than later..haha.} But anyway, I felt so good all week. I've made sure to take a multivitamin every morning and I take omega 3 fish oil supplements at night with dinner. After a workout I also usually have my Perfect fit Protein Shake.  I also drink a lot of water, I can now drink 88 oz pretty easily everyday, sometimes more. It use to be so hard for me to get all those ounces in.

I also started following Jamie Eason's 12 week trainer.  I modified it a little bit, I'm doing it all at home instead of going to the gym.  The gym might work better for others, it sometimes keeps you more motivated, etc.  But, we have a Bowflex that we've hardly used for like 8 years and I figured I could do all or most the exercises with that and my dumb bells. It makes it so easy so I can exercise while the kids play or early in the morning before they wake up.  For the first 4 weeks the program calls for No Cardio.  I was and still am a little worried about that.  I don't want to get behind on my running.  But, I do understand the importance of focusing on building more muscle and then once you start the Cardio again, the fat will hopefully burn off and the muscle you built will show through.  We will see. :)  Week 2 here I come.

I think this Clean Eating approved list is very helpful, I printed my own version out and stuck it on my fridge because sometimes what's clean and what's not can be confusing at first.

A couple helpful sites, if you haven't seen these you should probably check them out if all this clean eating talk interests you.
www.whitneycarlson.com (her personal website, food ideas, etc)
www.heandsheeatclean.com (her combined website with her husband and another couple, very good site, great info and motivation)

For some more motivation watch this transformation video, I love a good transformation story ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkTK5WI5MzM&feature=youtu.be