On our way to a new life!

Today marks day 1 of our 30 day detox. We have chosen to use Arbonne's detox plan. Over the next 30 days we shall be eliminating:

1. Wheat/gluten
2. Yeast
3. Dairy
4. Sugar
5. Alcohol
6. Vinegar
7. Coffee
8. Soy

Our diet will consist of mostly lean proteins and lots and lots of veggies and some fruits! Oh and Protein shakes for breakfast every morning.

We are going to be getting creative with recipes but thankfully Arbonne gives us a great recipe book to start with and from there we can either create or find more detox friendly meal ourselves.

Last weekend I sat down for about an hour and a half and wrote out our first 2 weeks worth of meal plans and my shopping lists. Yesterday I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on our first week of food. It felt surprising good to be shopping so healthy and to have such a precise plan for our meals.

From the beginning of our marriage cooking has been the thing I struggle with the most. It's not so much that I don't enjoy cooking, its just that I never had a plan, which meant I never had the products in the fridge, which led to me never cooking real meals. We ate a lot of pasta (hence the dramatic weight gain for both of us in the beginning), fast food, frozen meals or sometimes I'd just skip meals because it was easier than making something. It's suffice to say our diet was horrific! And it stayed that way for several years! Slowly we began to eat a little better once Livvi was born and was onto solids. I'd have more options in the fridge to fed her and us, but still there was no real plan!

In March of 2012 we found out that Livvi has CSID (Congential Sucrase-Isomaltase Deficiency). It means she lacks the correct amount of enzymes to digest Sucrose (a natural sugar) and Isomaltose (a wheat sugar). For more information about it go here. We were told her diet will need to change from here on out for her to live a happier and healthier life. Up until then Livvi had been struggling with chronic diarrhea and cyclical vomiting. No fun for her, or us for that matter! We cut out everything in her diet that we were meant to and straight away we started to see a difference. So since then her diet has been very limited but she does pretty well. Only recently has her little sin and curious nature gotten the better of her when she's snuck a piece of candy or taken a finger scoop of frosting from a cake. It's our fault though for having those items in the same house as her, but it's difficult and a temptation since Scott and I can still eat it and we haven't had enough self control to eliminate it from or diet as well. BUT...things might be changing!

SO! Here we are, embarking on a COMPLETE life change. I am excited, slightly nervous but mostly ready to get a hold of our diet and make changes for the better. The detox diet is going to be GREAT for Olivia because we'll no longer have sweets or wheat around the house and we'll be eating all types of food that she can eat and enjoy. I hope the next 30 days sets us on a path that we want to stick to and that we can all get on board with. I can't imagine that I'll never have a cookie, a piece of bread, a can of soda or a bowl of cereal again, but I do hope that it lessons my desire/addiction for them.

I personally have always struggled with tummy issues and I was told a couple years back that I have a slight sensitivity to gluten and I know I've always had a sensitivity's to dairy, so I am very curious to see how great I can feel without those two items in my life for a while. I've heard people think more clearly, have more energy and overall just feel so much better while on the detox. I'll let you know how it effects me!

One of the areas I think I will struggle with the most over the next 30 days is not having candy. I love candy. I LOVE CANDY!!!! Candy and I have a special relationship. If candy is in front of me, you bet your sweet bippy I'll be eating it. The colors, the smells, the tastes send me over the edge. And I can't just have one piece, I need hand fulls. We weren't allowed to have much candy growing up (which I hated as a kid but super appreciate the fact that I only have two fillings in my mouth, with the first one only getting filled a week before our wedding when I was 19) but now I seem to have a unhealthy relationship with it. I don't have self control when it's put in front of me. So that's another thing I am really looking forward to learning over the next 30 days.....self control!

Ok this has gotten long, sorry! My plan is to blog daily to keep myself accountable. I hope you enjoy reading about our progress along the way.

Here's to a new day!