April 1st - Day One
Day one of Paleo and the AdvoCare nutrition challenge...
I had my weigh in on Saturday. My stats were as follows:
Hight: not quite 5'1"
Weight: 126.5 lbs
Body Fat: 23.7%
So today, Sunday, is the first day of the challenge. Here was my routine:
Fiber drink - Not so good. I am very much a texture eater. It's pretty think. I had to thin it out quite a bit to get through it. The taste isn't bad, its just the texture.
Omegaplex - went down easy, no fishy after taste or burbs at all.
Breakfast - Eggs with Turkey mixed in and raspberries on the side. Pretty good.
Lunch - Grilled lean round steak with wasabi teriyaki and grilled zucchini and mushrooms with seasame dressing and spicy mustard mixed together for a sauce to season the veggies with. AMAZING. Eating Paleo is going to be a cinch if I get to eat like this all the time.
Afternoon snack - V16 energy drink. I substituted this instead of the Spark because sometimes I have trouble with caffeine. I would say it doesn't get you QUITE as pumped as the Spark does, but it does help you feel alert and focused.
Dinner - chicken with potatoes, mushrooms, asparagus and onions steamed in a tinfoil packet, 'hobo stew' fashion. Om Nom Nom.
Omegaplex - Same results
Herbal Cleanse before bed.
So far so good. I feel pretty good, haven't felt tired or gross. No tummy trouble from the fiber... everything is a go for tomorrow.
April 2nd - Day Two
Fiber drink - fiber powder + 1 or 2 tablespoons of water. I MUCH prefer the consistency of moist citrus flavor saw dust to that of citrus flavored slime. I just ate it with a spoon and then drank the recommended 16 oz. of water. (8 for with the drink and 8 after). I'm PROBABLY not supposed to take it like that, but oh well.
Breakfast - eggs with turkey, tomatoes, mushrooms, and chives mixed in, I had some turkey bacon on the side and avocado on top.
Omegaplex - same as above
Lunch - left overs from breakfast
Dinner - skillet cooked chicken with zucchini, mushrooms and chives in an light orange sauce. Sadly... no rice. :( I forgot to cook it.
Omegaplex - same as above
Still doing well. I only had part of my energy drink today. Feeling pretty good all around. I do notice that I do not quite have the munchies as much as I normally do. I am kind of craving sweet things, I think due to the lack of cabs, which makes your body have an insulin spike. But aside from really wanting some chocolate, I feel good and not as hungry.
Otherwise, everything else feels good and normal.
April 3rd - Day Three
Fiber drink - downed.
Breakfast - Eggs and veggies with bacon on the side and pineapple.
Omegaplex - same as above
Lunch - Turkey, bacon, avocado with apples on the side
Dinner - Turkey burger patties grilled with a salad and sweet potato fries.
Omegaplex - same as above.
Feels... normal. I am definitely less hungry, and I can't say on the energy for certain, I got 3 hours of sleep last night... heh... but overall, feeling pretty good.
The food sounds great but the other stuff sounds yuk! Why do you need all that fibre and stimulant stuff if you're eating properly?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand the THEORY is, and this is AdvoCare not Paleo, that by cleaning out your body from all the harmful toxins and chemicals that have built up over the years and restoring your body to a more natural equilibrium, it prepares your body for all the good things you're going to put in it by getting rid of all the bad things that are currently mucking up your intestines and such.
ReplyDeleteAutopsies have shown that some people die with as much as 7 lbs of unpassable material in their gut. GROSS! This gets rid of all that and allows your body to effectively absorb the good stuff!
So, the fiber and the herbal cleanse tablets help your body flush all the toxins in your gut, kidneys and liver.
The omega 3 tablets are there to help get your Omega 3 fatty acids balanced with your omega 6 fatty acids. When these acids are unbalanced your body can't function properly. Most meat on the market (Unless you are buying all grass fed beef and free range chicken) has a 40 to 1 ration of omega 6 to omega 3.
The energy drink is basically a multivitamin. There is no caffeine, barely any sugar, like 4g, no dyes, etc. Its all vitamins and minerals and plant/root extracts that can be easily absorbed into the body.
Anyway, I guess its supposed to "jump start" your nutrition and wellness plan. You're not supposed to be on it for forever. The 'cleanse' phase, with the fiber and stuff, is just 10 days total, 6 days of fiber, 7 days of probiotic restore and 6 days of the herbal cleanse. Then you switch to a MNS (Metabolic Nutrition System) to help jump start your metabolism to take in all the good things and keep your energy up while your body adjusts for 14 days and then you're done. All Paleo from there on out.
Anyway, that is my understanding of it. I was just curious and wanted to give it a shot. I do intend to continue Paleo after the nutrition challenge either way, so I figure I'll just see what happens.
Okay, thanks for the explanation. It's true it can take up to 3 weeks for your body to adjust to this new way of eating. Perhaps this 10 day nutrition plan will shorten that time a little. Resist the sugar urges, it's only 'white death' and the cravings will pass....
DeleteIf I ever became a vegetarian, it wouldn't be due to my love of animals, but because I hate plants.
ReplyDeleteYou are not the first person I have heard say that. :P I LOVE fruits, but I have a harder time with veggies. I will probably end up eating a lot of zucchini and sugar snap peas. : / At least I get to have all the lean meat I want!
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
ReplyDelete"Autopsies have shown that some people die with as much as 7 lbs of unpassable material in their gut. GROSS!"
I have seen this claim made on the websites of companies that make 'cleansing' products and it always struck me as a strange thing to say in order to tout the need for their product. The average human has almost 30ft of intestines (both large and small). That is a lot of room for digestive remains to remain even after death.
Further, I have seen on television "Dr. Blah blah" state that such claims about the necessity of cleanses to be bunk (off the top of my head I cannot remember the doctor's actual name or the program I saw it on). I might further suggest that if there were some inability to remove food from our intestines WITHOUT a cleanse product then such would lead to terrible constipation pain, right? And this would be endemic among the non-cleanse using population. One last point; it has been noted that some cleansing products contain substances which can harm the healthy bacteria that live in our guts.
I dunno... perhaps I am too suspicious. It just seems suspect, to me, knowing that these companies have a fiscal interest in making me think that my body can't function properly without their products.
Hey, I appreciate your arguments. I am honestly not trying to tout this product or anything, I mainly did this challenge and blog as an experiment, to really test it and see if it works at all or is worth it, to me. I want to give a straight forward account of everything in case anyone else wants to try it, if they do research and find my blog, they can have answers that came from someone who is not sponsoring the product and doesn't have an agenda other than "Does this really work? What are the facts?"
ReplyDeleteIn reply to your comments, the 7lbs of unpassable material is not fecal material that just has yet to pass, we're talking about sludge that has built up inside the intestines. I'm going to try to explain this, but again, I'm not a scientist, so here goes:
When we eat large amounts of glueten, it causes inflamation in the gut and an increase in a chemical (I head the name at the class, but didn't write it down, it starts with Z) in our bodies that weakens the bond between the cells of the lining of our intestines. This causes a 'leaky gut' which means that instead of filtering out all the bad stuff like our body is designed to do, a bunch of icky waste material actually moves THROUGH the lining of your intestine or blocks up the spaces where nutrients are supposed to move through the intestine so that you have a build up of material that you can't pass and that makes it much more difficult for your body to absorb the materials.
I'm sure there are some very bad cleanses on the market. If you do something, you want to research to make sure you are getting a good product that is all natural or as close to all natural as you can possibly get. Which is what I have done. The cleanse that I am doing also comes with a probiotic restore to help make sure that the healthy bacteria in my gut stay there.
As far as non-cleanse using populations, look at some of the other nations as compared to Americans. We eat more fast food and processed food than probably anyone else on the planet. Americans, in general, obviously not all of us, but the majority of us, tend to be among the unhealthiest and most obese people in the world and suffer from far more heart conditions, diabetes, and other completely avoidable diseases. If you are eating more natural, non-processed or non-genetically modified food, my understanding is that this isn't really a problem because you are not putting all the toxins and sludge into your body in the first place.
The idea is not to stay on the products forever, but to use them to get yourself back to healthy equilibrium internally and continue on with a healthy life style and proper eating habits. I see it this way, there are some good companies out there and some bad ones. Some of them are just out to make a profit and they don't care what goes into the product. You have to do your research and find the good ones that actually have a genuine vested interest in people's health.
What about pharmaceutics companies? They have to be as bad if not worse than supplement companies because they buy off doctors all the time and make us think we NEED to be on all their medication. In some cases some people do genuinely need the medication. In others, I think we have become such a pill pushing nation that we don't give it a second though when our doctors prescribe us a variety of meds that could cure things that could easily be handled with exercise, proper diet, and better time management.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, its all stuff to think about and consider. I don't blame you for being skeptical, but I also encourage you to spend some time doing research and seeing what you can come up with. Find an expert, talk with them. Find someone who is doing active research as opposed to someone who is doing it because that is the way medicine has always been done.
Once again, nice thought provoking responses. And just to be clear, I didn't think it was YOU that was touting any product or company. I guess the target of my comment might have sounded too general.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, don't get me started on pharmaceuticals. While I like things like penicillin, heart transplants for babies, and dialysis machines, I agree with you that there are many issues that we face that simply DO NOT NEED a pill to fix.
No worries, I just wanted to clarify my intent in case any one reads this after the fact.
ReplyDeleteI whole heartedly agree. Glad to know we are on the same page then! :D
I can testify that as a gym owner the results I have experienced and seen with a herbal cleanse are phenomenal. AdvoCare has a scientific medical advisory board full of physicians with a combined total of over 200 yrs experience in related medical fields. The cleanse is in a way that is easy on the gut and cleans out your liver and kidneys. The ingredients are all natural but things that you wouldn't put on a salad. I have seen people lose 5-6% body fat in 3 weeks using a cleanse and eating cleaner. I have seen multiple people lose 9-11% in 3 weeks doing a full AdvoCare 24 day challenge and finish feeling on top of the world. No one can argue that! Amazing
ReplyDeleteUsing a 'cleansing' product to lose weight does not sound like a good idea to me and I'm sure that Samurai Girl was not proposing it. Though I can see merit in using a high fibre product to clear out the gut (a colonic washout would do the job as well)because insoluble material does accumulate in the intestines, particularly in people who have eaten crap for many years or suffer form chronic constipation; the concept of cleansing the liver and kidneys is a complete nonsense! The liver and kidneys ARE the organs that cleanse and filter the blood, they don't need cleansing themselves. In fact they do such a good job at maintaining homeostasis in our bodies that the idea that we need to 'detox' makes no sense at all. The liver and kidneys are our natural detox machines.
DeleteI'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that, Sue. I had identical thoughts about "detoxing" the liver and kidneys as well as using 'cleansing' products for weight loss.
DeleteI would imagine the only thing that could really detox the liver and kidneys would be establishing the habit of adequate hydration coupled with "clean" eating.
To SueC and Strongest Karate, if it works, it works, right?
DeleteTo play the devil's advocate, isn't it kind of like a vacuum cleaner, or a filter on a fish take? The filter in the vacuum and fish tank are built to cleanse and filter, just like the liver and kidneys cleanses and filters your body. A vacuum sucks up dirt and the air goes through a filter and then back into your house. The water goes through the filter, the dirt, food, and fish crap go through and the clean water gets filtered out. However, these cannot go on at maximum efficiency forever. The filters MUST be cleaned out to continue working properly, right? If I don't clean out the filter on the vacuum or the in the fish tank, it will stop picking up dirt or filtering grime out of the water.
Based on all the terrible things people eat these days, fast foods and very over processed foods that, most of which are things that our natural body filters were never meant to handle. For weight loss, who knows, but certainly for over all health and well being reasons I don't see a problem in giving her organs a hand in getting rid of any of the bad stuff while Samurai Girl switches to clean eating. BUT, that is just my opinion and everyone is of course, entitled to their own.
Ok, I think this could be debated till the sun burns out. I think this is about where I am going to bow out of the discussion unless someone else has a specific question FOR ME that has not been addressed yet. Here is my final 2 cents on the matter:
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I don't really know about any of the liver or kidney stuff. All I wanted to do was give an accurate account as I used the product in case anyone else out there on the web was interested in trying it. I hate trying to look up information on a product and only finding bull shit answers that you can tell were written by the company. I want MY account to be unbiased. Here is what I ate, here is what I took, here is how I felt/what I experienced, and at the end here are the results.
I am using it to help me on the road to better eating. I want to be fit and healthy, as I have stated before. That is my goal. Honest to God, I don't even own a scale! I don't care about weight. It was part of weigh in, but I am mostly curious about my body % and seeing if that is affected any by the end of the challenge.
I can say that I don't FEEL bad at all. I think if something were doing terrible things to my insides, I would feel it. To be brutally graphic and honest, I was really worried I was going to have raging diarrhea the whole cleanse. So far, not the case at all. I feel good. I don't feel tired or sick. I believe that, if I were doing something bad to my body, it would tell me. I have a pretty sensitive stomach and am usually pretty in tune with things, and I haven't felt bad so far. If that changes, I will of course note that in my blog. I think discussion is good, questioning leads us to the answers, but I am going to continue on and see how things have turned out at the end. If I lose weight as part of everything, cool, if not, that's ok too. I will still continue eating well and working out.
Samurai Girl, please don't take our comments about the merits or otherwise of detox agents personally, they're certainly not meant that way. As an ex renal nurse it was just a point of principle to point out the role of the liver and kidneys in detoxifying/filtering the blood (I'll desist on putting anon. right on his fish tank analogy)
ReplyDeleteI think what you are doing is great and certainly won't harm you. I'm really interested in how you find the paleo diet as it is very similar to the plan that I am following. I hope you find it as beneficial as I do. Keep posting :-)
I hesitate to post again but feel I should echo Sue's remark: our little debate over the topic was meant to imply no reflection on you. You have simply brought into focus a very interesting and polarizing topic which rouses the opinions and feelings of those who frequent your blog.
ReplyDeleteThat said, if the moderating/approving/editing/etc of all these comments is proving to be more of a chore than a pleasure then please let me know. I will take no offense to it and will do my best to limit my contributions to one or two comments. ^_^
On a side note, as a blog owner myself I wouldn't be entirely displeased at having attracted such a vocal community - but still, such a thing can certainly be a double-edged sword.
All the best,
-Brett
Hey guys, I don't feel attacked. I actually welcome your comments, however if you will remember the last post that got a lot of attention it got blown a bit out of proportion. I ended up shutting the comments down, and I believe Brett e-mailed me over it some time after the fact. (To which I forgot to respond... Sorry about that. :( ) As you said, it CAN be a double-edged sword. Anyway, feel free to continue to comment on whatever posts you like! But I am happy to have followers and commenters (is that even a word?) on my blog, so please don't misunderstand! Thank you for your support!!! <3 I appreciate all the comments and feedback!
ReplyDeleteI remember that post. Or rather, I should say I remember the comments. Talk about judgmental! If I ever got that kind of response from something I wrote, I would seriously consider shutting my whole blog down!
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, I am interested to see how this dietary experiment plays out and await your next installment.