Confession. I don’t eat greens all day. I don’t only drink green juice. And I’m not immune to the sugar bug.
Even those of us that work in Nutrition day in and day out don’t eat even close to perfect. Well, not me anyways. I guess I can’t speak for everyone in the Nutrition field. haha. But c’mon, nobody is perfect… right? 😉 The purpose for my transparency and calling myself out is to hopefully give you all a little more insight to my life, but my greatest hope is to inspire you to evaluate your lifestyle and be encouraged to live your best life and feel like your best self on daily basis.
Tenley here! Hi guys. 🙂 I just recently finished up a week of our 7 Day DIY Cleanse, and I’m still going… Not in complete cleanse mode, but a few lifestyle upgrades from the cleanse that left me feeling soooo much better, I decided to stick with these few upgrades. I REALLY needed this 7 Day cleanse, and as I began my confession earlier, I want to continue with the transparency and tell you why…
First, let’s start with The Goal: My desire was to commit to completely the full 7 Days to give my body the opportunity to reset. I wanted to finish off the 7 days with energy. I wanted to feel balanced. I wanted my hormones to not be so out of whack! I wanted the constant bloat to go away! I wanted to feel my best from the inside out! And that’s something I knew that I had the knowledge and tools to do, but I just had been putting it off. Writing that makes me realize that putting off these upgrades was kind of unkind to my body that so desperately needed a positive change. And now having taken action, and it was only 7 Days of my life, I don’t know why I waited.
My Symptoms: I was feeling that something was off with my hromones and cycle. Annoying! I’m pretty darn regular, but for the last few months I had plenty of symptoms hinting to me that my cycle was abnormal, like horrible cramps and out of the norm pms symptoms to name a few. My usual energy felt like it didn’t exist anymore, probably my adrenals crying out for a little extra TLC. I was feeling “blah” all over and experiencing extra bloating and tummy aches. And as many of you know, the day gluten was removed from my life my tummy aches had gone away, so what was up? I wasn’t eating gluten, but my tummy was hurting— extra gassy and gas cramps to be honest. My gut instinct was that my body just needed a break because of all of the inflammation that was going on through my body because of what had become a pretty unbalanced lifestyle. You can usually listen to that “gut instinct”! Pun intended. 😉
So what in my daily life was so unbalanced? Nothing too bad, but over time things catch up. I had been traveling quite a bit, eating out a lot, and drinking an extra cup of coffee some days, drinking wine or a cocktail a few times a week, and filling up on food without eating any balanced meals. I was also starting to reach for more sugary treats than usual… probably looking for energy.
Believe it or not, ALL of those things can affect your hormones and can cause inflammation in and outside of your body seen or unseen. All of these things that were causing me to feel unbalanced also play a HUGE part in your gut/digestive system, causing the tummy aches, gas, and bloating. My body was feeling extra sluggish, because without a doubt, my adrenals were feeling exhausted not having the best resources to pull from. P.S. Did you know that a poor gut/GI Tract can affect your hormones AND your adrenals?
So why did I let my body go so long without the extra TLC when I knew what it would take to feeling better? Great question!
EXCUSES are all to blame! I knew that I had needed to take at least 7 Days just doing our DIY Cleanse to at least direct myself to getting back on track and into a healthier routine so that I could feel like my best self and knock out my symptoms. BUT… excuses, excuses, excuses! My biggest ones: “I’m too busy”, “I’m traveling too much”, “I have too many special events on the calendar”, “These friends/family members won’t think I’m fun”, “It’s too hard.” Anyone else relate to those excuses? Well, let me tell you something. YOU are worth it, YOU are worth at least 7 Days to feel just that much better. And that’s what I realized. My goal was to feel like my best self, yet I wasn’t doing anything to get there.
I created a Game Plan. And if you’re feeling crummy, this is what you owe yourself to do. Create your game plan, MAKE A COMMITMENT to yourself. Tell someone your intentions for accountability. And then just pick a day to begin, and do it! (And if you don’t have the DIY Cleanse and want to use it to help guide you towards a reset, you can get it HERE)
Tenley’s Plan:
- I decided to start by removing alcohol and grains for a week before I started the DIY Cleanse. I removed grains (even though I love them and the ones I was eating are gluten free). I believe my body was having a harder time breaking them down, so I wanted to remove them to see if that would help. Plus, grains can cause inflammation, and I was pretty sure I was experiencing that.
- During that first week prior to the DIY Cleanse I sat down with the DIY Cleanse. I planned my meals that I would make from our menu and recipes. I went shopping and did some meal prep. Then I began! I continued to stay grain free, say no thank you to alcohol, took a break from refined sugar, cut out dairy, and said “so long” for the week to my beloved coffee and caffeine! (I have the DIY Cleanse downloaded on my computer, phone, and iPad, so it’s super easy to access it at all times— even when I’m not cleansing but just want to look at a recipe!)
- I successfully completed my 7 days, and it really wasn’t that hard! My body thankfully didn’t go through any crazy detox symptoms with the coffee (which was what I was most worried about), I just missed going to my coffee shop. I was full, I felt fueled, I had energy, and I absolutely loved being tummy ache free and not bloated!! Hallelujah!
- Now that I’m finished with the 7 days and feeling so great, I decided to continue by following our 2 Week Sample Menu and recipes that comes with the DIY Cleanse. I’m still drinking my Morning Elixir each morning and I’ve decided that I want to continue to eat grain free! But with the grain free plan, I do intend for that to look like an 80/20 situation. The 20% will allow me to enjoy gluten free grains when needed or wanted!
Emily and I created the DIY Cleanse to be something you could do on your own and for your own personal needs. Doing the cleanse for these last 7 Days was a great reminder to me of how easy it can be to take a few days to feel like your BEST self! And man, we have some delicious recipes!
And chocolate lovers… We have a tasty treat that will help you get through. We actually added our Chocolate Avocado Mousse to the cleanse this year for a guilt free treat! You can find it on our Valentine’s Day Treat post HERE! I mean, a cleanse with chocolate mousse?! Yes please!!
It really is a cleanse for people that hate cleansing!
