Day 7 Cleanse Phase (Water and Choices)

Day 7

For pretty much everything you may do that has to do with health water is going to be a key ingredient. Today I made the mistake of not drinking enough water and my program suffered because of it. On day one I spoke about planning and yesterday it was all about not giving yourself a choice. In all reality you want choices, but you want to make those choices well in advance so that when you get to the moment you don’t make a bad choice because you were too tired or your feet hurt, or (insert your favorite excuse).

One of my high school coaches among the hundreds of clichés he used he would periodically recite this little gem. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” I still get annoyed at hearing that phrase but I can’t deny the truth in it and maybe that is why it bothers me so much, because I need to work on it.

Well my excuse today was water. I could have planned ahead and made sure I was well hydrated, but I didn’t. I could have made sure I had a nice fresh water bottle in my lunch but I didn’t. So that you don’t have to hear all the things I could have done, I’m going to tell you what I’m’ going to do from now on. I will be keeping a water bottle in my lunch box. I also will always have a Camelbak® in the trunk of my car from now on.

I didn’t work out today because I had a massive head ache from dehydration. I have only been seriously dehydrated once in my life and that was when I was attending Airborne School last summer. I was nowhere near that level but I still made up some excuse to be sedentary.

Even before I started the 24 day Challenge I was trying to be more conscious about what I was eating. Everything I have read or heard recently has to do with lean proteins. While protein is great, I am a little more inclined to believe that a balance of everything is the best. I think the reason that protein has been so big lately is because we chronically eat proteins that are really fatty, and that produces chubby bellies like the one I’m getting rid of. At the same time we can’t ignore fats either or the dreaded Carbs. There really needs to be a balance between these areas, as well as our fruits and veggies.

Now I’m not saying that my dinner today was balanced but, I did try to make my chicken burrito from Qdoba® as healthy as I could. Instead of white rice I chose the brown rice, I chose black beans, chicken instead of pork or beef, and grilled veggies including squash. I also chose the whole wheat tortilla instead of the white flour tortilla. The point of this is not the food but that I made a decision before I entered the restaurant that my meal was going to be as healthy as I could make it. That is why I turned down the cream goodness that is the Qdoba Queso.

The point is not that we have to give up those things that we think taste good, but we have to start moderating those things and make them healthier. Over time our taste buds will change and we will crave healthier foods. We just have to allow ourselves the time to change. We owe it to ourselves.