I must be honest, I'm not a big fan of the hot summer days so I spend a lot of this time de-cluttering closets and organizing cabinets that tend to pile up throughout the school year. As the summer of 2011 was winding to a close, I realized, I still had a few more cabinets to gut. I set myself down in the kitchen floor and pulled everything out of the kid’s art cabinet. Buried in the back, I found a book that my mom had given me a couple of years ago. The book was titled "The Eat-Clean Diet" by Tosca Reno. I flipped through the pages, interested because I had slowly put on some weight over the last few years. That night I read the entire book becoming more and more intrigued with every turn of the page. There was something about this diet that just seemed to make sense in my black and white world. The next morning I awoke determined to begin eating clean! However, I had 2 problems: 1). I lacked a motivator-sure clean eating sounded great, but how would I stay on task and 2). My refrigerator and cabinets were stocked with processed food.
I decided to venture off to the grocery store to buy everything I needed to begin eating clean. I spent at least 2 hours meandering up and down the grocery store isles reading labels. I quickly realized that I needed to stay along the outside walls of the market. This is where you find most of your clean food items.
As my new healthy lifestyle began, I found myself constantly thinking of my nephew, Brandon, who was deployed in Iraq for the year. It was a hot summer in Oklahoma and we were experiencing miserable temperatures over 110 degrees. Every time I started to feel sorry for myself, I would think of the 120 degree temperatures my nephew was experiencing in the desert in full fatigues. And, that is when the light bulb went off…I had it…my motivator! If Brandon can live a year in horrible conditions then certainly I could eat clean until he returned in November.
It was the first of August and I had made up my mind that I could do anything for 3 months. I posted a picture of Brandon on my fridge. Every time I thought, “I would really like to make some chocolate chip dough” I would look at Brandon’s picture. This helped me to stay 100% clean for the next 3 months. Over the course of this time I lost 29 pounds! By the time Brandon returned, my new diet had truly become a way of life that had gradually overflowed on to my children and husband. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of complaints along the way, but it was too late-I was convinced this was a healthy lifestyle for us all. I am proud to say that I have lost a total of 35 pounds.
