Good Morning! How are y’all doing today? I got back in town from Orlando late late Sunday night and haven’t had a chance to talk to y’all yet. My trip was fantastic and I’ll do a brief recap later in the week. I had a wonderful birthday, one of the best I could ask for! I learned a lot at my conference and I’m excited about implementing some new stuff at work. Overall, it was just a phenomenal trip and I’m so glad I was able to go for work and for pleasure.
Now I’m back to reality and although that can be slightly disheartening, I have a lot of stuff that I’m excited about over the next few weeks! For one, I start the process of getting braces. I’m shaking in my boots over here, but I know it’ll be worth while. I get my teeth pulled over Memorial Day Weekend, so I know what big and exciting plans I have – recovery! Like I mentioned above, I learned a lot at my conference, so that will keep me busy over the next few weeks as I sort through the information and decide what I want to do with our office. The other thing that I’m super excited about is the 14 Day detox Reset that Mary Lindsey and I are doing!
Mary Lindsey is my friend who works at our local Whole Foods as the healthy eating specialist. I try to attend every class that she teaches at Whole Foods and we do a group run on Wednesday mornings together. I have really enjoyed getting to know Mary Lindsey on a more personal level and I definitely think it pays off to have a dietitian as a friend, she is always willing to answer my questions and explain things in greater detail for me!
We were having lunch one day and she was telling me about doing a “detox” diet, except she’s not a huge fan of using the word detox because it gives off a negative connotation. It is not that the actual definition of the word detox is bad, but it’s what society has made it out to be. So Mary Lindsey came up with a more creative term for her 14 day diet – 14 Day Reset. After she finished telling me about it, I knew I wanted in on the action! (You know I don’t shy away from a good challenge!) So we decided on a date that worked for both of us to do the 14 Day Reset together and I’m excited to say that it started yesterday! This reset came just at the right time, I can assure you that my body needs a total reset after my staple Disney foods of Mickey pretzels and Vegan donuts (all day err day.)
I went over to Mary Lindsey’s house last night for dinner so we could discuss the parameters of our diet and plan a few exciting things for the blog! For those of you who enjoy vlogs and have missed seeing those on here, let me send some joy your way – we’re vlogging! (I’m looking at you Meg!) We have two videos that we plan to put up over the next few weeks and I think they’ll be fun & informative. They’re centered around quick & healthy meal ideas so you’ll have no excuse to skip healthy at work or on the go! Another thing coming to the blog is a guest post by Mary Lindsey. We’re throwing around a few ideas right now, but I can already tell that it’s going to be a good one!
Dinner: Deliciously creamy tomato basil soup, roasted potatoes, and roasted asparagus with a vinaigrette drizzle.
For those of you who are curious and possibly want to tag along on our 14 Day Reset, here is what we came up with:
Putting in –
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Whole Grains / Starchy Vegetables
- Beans / Lentils
- Nuts / Seeds
- Healthy Seafood
- Healthy Fats
Cutting out –
- Dairy
- Coffee
- Refined Grains
- Gluten (wheat) – no beer
- Fried Foods
- Sugars
- Meat
Personal Health Goals, Heather –
- Yoga 1x/week
- Pilates Reformer 1x/week
- 30 minute run 3x/week
- Drink plenty of water
Personal Health Goals, Mary Lindsey –
- Yoga 3x/week
- 30 minute run 3x/week
- Sleep 8 hours/night
- Drink plenty of water
- Do not eat with distractions
This diet is very similar to the Health Starts Here diet, although we’re taking it a little more extreme by cutting out gluten. We certainly don’t see anything wrong with gluten if you don’t have an actual gluten allergy. We are testing the theory for ourselves that gluten goes to our mid section and we both agree that we struggle with a flat stomach and love handles, so we’d like to see if cutting out gluten will help with that. If it does help, we do not plan to eliminate gluten completely after the Reset, but it will let us know that when we are feeling bloated or gaining weight in that area, then we may need to reduce the amount of gluten we’re currently consuming. Similar to the Health Starts Here, we’re also cutting out all added sweeteners that do not come from fruit. We debated whether or not we’d like to cut out honey & maple syrup. They’re natural sweeteners, but they’re definitely not better than sweetening with fruit, so we decided for this specific diet, we’d cut out honey and maple syrup to challenge ourselves to sweeten with fruits. Dates are an excellent way to sweeten a meal or dessert.
Mary Lindsey also shared two new blogs with me that I’m excited to start reading for recipe inspiration: The First Mess and Cookie + Kate. The tomato soup that Mary Lindsey made came from The First Mess and I was a huge fan of it!
I hope each of you are having a great week so far and if you have any questions about the 14 Day Reset or want to get involved with our challenge, then shoot me an e-mail!! I’d love to keep you accountable and share tips I’ve learned over the past year.
