I Tried the Advocare Cleanse & This is What Happened

Fad diets and weight loss gimmicks are everywhere.  The Cabbage Soup, Atkins, Paleo, Blood Type, French Woman, HGC, Juicing...and it just goes on and on and on.  Those are just the ones that I remember hearing about at one time or another off the top of my head.  People are obsessed with pills, plans and quick fixes to get what they want yesterday.  I admit to trying some of them.  Not because I'm looking for a miracle but mainly just because I think it's fun to experiment.  I've done low Carb for 3 days and juice fasting for up to 5.  Just because.  And I think it's okay to experiment and try different things as long as you know that when it comes down to it weight loss and being fit and healthy is 70% eating balanced meals and 30% exercising.  We may want to believe otherwise but there really is no way around it.  That's all it is.

 Advocare drink & Pills // Chix Veg Stir Fry // Grilled Chix Salad // Egg Whites // Veg & Fruit snacks // Chix Breast

So when I heard about AdvoCare Herbal Cleanse I was like sure, why not?  It's not so much as a diet plan but diet supplements that are supposed to aid in cleansing. I have a difficult digestive system and I can use all the help I can get. I figured it would be nice to try a cleanse that would actually allow me to eat food and does not require Cayenne Pepper because I already know I can't handle that.  Yuck!  The kit  comes with powdered fiber drink packets and two different packets of herbal cleanse and probiotic supplements.  The schedule tells you what to take when during the 10 day period.  The Fiber drink is thick!!  It's less like a drink and more like the consistency of Apple Sauce.  I learned the hard way that you should not try to drink it with a straw.  It just clogs it up.  I have a stainless steel straw and I literally had to insert a coffee stirrer straw just to unplug the muck.  And you should just drink it right away.  Chug it.  The longer it sits the thicker it gets.  The citrus flavor is pretty good.

It does not come with a diet so I did my own thing.  The food plan was simple.  High protein, lots of fruit and veggies, low on the carbs and as much "clean" unprocessed food as possible.  I had to be reasonable with myself so I was aiming for about 80% clean.  No chips, candy, chocolate or baked goods.  And lots of water which I've already been really good about for a while now.  I tried to stay around 30% Protein and Fats and 40% Carbs.  Normally, my carbs can average closer to 50% or 60% so that's really good for me.  I used the Lose It App to track it.  My Protein for the first 4 days was around 70 grams but I figured it was okay.  I mean, you can't have too much protein right?  Turns out I was wrong.  I was constipated for the first 4 days. So after that I tried to keep the protein closer to 30 or 40 grams max.

I have to say I killed it on the diet and exercise.  I wasn't perfect but I didn't expect to be.  I had my cheats.  I did not give up coffee with one creamer and Splenda which was one cup a day max and some days not at all.  There were also a few glasses of wine.  I met friends out for dinner and went ahead and got the flat bread pizza but only ate half.  The majority of the time even when I ate out I was eating chicken (lots of chicken), salads, greens, veggies and fruit.  If I went out to breakfast I'd order egg whites.  Making the right choices while dining out was a huge victory for me, because lately, I'd just go crazy ordering whatever and overdoing it.  Day one of Advocare was also day one of 30 Day Shred and I did it almost every single day I was on the cleanse.

I didn't lose weight.  Realistically, I don't really need to. I still kinda wish I had, but that's okay.  My main goal for this was to detox.  It don't think it really did anything for my digestion but it did get my healthy eating back on track.  I kind of screwed it up by overdosing on Protein the first 3 days but even after that I didn't feel any different than I usually do.  After two back to back vacations on top of just not really caring as much as I should about what I was eating I was in major need of something to change my mindset from junky back to healthy.  And it worked.  Because I was cleansing, eating like crap would have felt totally counterproductive so I didn't do it.  They say it takes 21 days to form a habit but I think I did it in 10.  I managed to eat healthy for 10 days straight and it became a habit that I plan on sticking with at least the majority of the time.  There was no mindless snacking on the couch.  I stopped craving sweets and started looking forward to eating carrots and greens when I was hungry. I  stopped feeling like a garbage disposal.  It feels really good to be putting mostly healthy clean foods into my body again.  I'd do the cleanse again just for that benefit alone when I need to hit the reset button again.  Plus, it was only $30 bucks.