30 Day Challenge

I turned 30 a few months ago, and I know this is clichéd, but I've definitely been noticing a difference.  So with an eye towards enjoying an overall better level of health, I've been tinkering with my diet.

And when I say 'diet' it isn't some code word for suddenly eating nothing but grapefruit and cottage cheese for 2 weeks of self-inflicted punishment.  To me, 'diet' is my normal way of eating.  I want changes to be sustainable, and freaky grapefruit-and-cottage-cheese diets are NOT sustainable.

Over at the blog 'No Meat Athlete' I found an eating suggestion that really responated with me.  This article suggests having a smoothie for breakfast and a salad for lunch.  Everything else is up for grabs.  The theory is that once you lock in those 2 meals, the damage any particular snack or dinner could do would be pretty limited.

This is appealing to me for several reasons.  First of all, I really like both smoothies AND salads, so eating these every day wouldn't feel like a punishment at all!  In fact, at college the only thing I really liked at the Dining Hall was the salad bar and the ice cream machine ;-)

Also, since I work from home I often struggle with what to have for lunch.  By the time I'm hungry I'm ready to just grab something.  If I remove the choice from the situation then there's no more guesswork - I can even chop my salad greens in the morning so lunch just requires dumping them into a bowl and sprinkling whatever toppings on I feel like that day!

So I've decided to embark on a 30 Day Challenge!  From today (Monday, January 6th) until Wednesday, February 5th I'm going to stick with the breakfast = smoothie and lunch = salad program, and see what happens.  Will I manage to loose any weight?  Will I feel better, have more energy, sleep better?

*Full Disclosure: Jack and I are taking a trip to Asheville this weekend, so I already know the smoothie / salad thing will breakdown over the weekend.  But that should be the only exception.

* MORE Full Disclosure: Due to the INSANELY COLD temperatures we had January 6th (it got down to something like 8 degrees) our pipes froze even though we left every single faucet running over night.  Since it never got above freezing today, our pipes never thawed, and I never had running water today.  No running water meant it was impossible to do anything, especially anything in the kitchen.  Sad.  :-(

*UPDATE 2/5/14 - See the report on how the challenge turned out here.