Alrighty, off we go! It’s week 1 of the Arbonne 30 Days to Healthy Living Bootcamp. Here’s my experience and narrative for the first week which had it’s share of ups and downs.

 

Day 1- I was added to my bootcamp a little bit late so I missed the whole idea of prepping meals and snacks the weekend prior but I wasn’t too worried about that because we enjoy cooking. For breakfast I grabbed the probiotic and added it to about 4 oz of water, handed one to my hubby, and took a swig. He immediately chokes, slams the rest of his drink and gasps “OMG it tastes like BURNT HAIR?!!” I started laughing and told him to shut up because I still had half of mine to drink and he was exactly right, that stuff tastes like burnt hair. Disgusting. I choked the rest of mine down nearly gagging.

Well this 30 days is going to go well! Face –> palm.

Lunch time I had the vanilla shake with fiber supplement. The vanilla stuff actually tastes pretty good and that’s saying something because I have a major aversion to artificial sweetener taste (the protein powders have stevia in them). I did snack on a couple left over dino nuggets from my toddlers lunch and had a hardboiled egg, and I had a handful of organic chips prior to dinner, but hey it was day 1, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Dinner was a turkey ranch meatloaf, a little dry since we opted to go without the “ranch” topping but it was still tasty. Attempted to get everyone fed prior to 7pm but the meatloaf took longer than anticipated so oh well. Had some detox tea prior to bed. Overall a fairly decent day 1.

Day 2- figured out that you should take the burnt hair juice in a small shot form rather than a glass to savor. Protein shake with fiber for breakfast, steak salad for lunch, things are going well. Mid afternoon I’m still hungry and snacking a bite here or there of toddlers macaroni… damn you will power. Oh and I also caved and had a beer before dinner. I think I’m pretty much sucking at this but tomorrow is another day right?! At least dinner was on point, pesto chicken spaghetti squash.

Day 3- can I actually go a full day following the “rules”? hmmm. I keep viewing the Facebook bootcamp page where everyone is showing their healthy shakes and perfect lunches and think to myself “you guys suck” am I the only one stealing nuggets and peanut butter crackers from my kids (all on the no-no list)… am I the only one still hungry?? Despite this, I managed to finish the day with almost no snacking! I did sneak a few veggie chips from my kids lunches, clearly my diet problem is having children in the house. Shake, steak and asparagus for lunch, vegetarian vegetable soup for dinner, detox tea before bed.

Day 4- hopped on the scale today, it’s the lowest weight I’ve seen since even before I was preggo with #4 (who is coincidentally 4 months old)! Take that all you perfect boot campers with your perfect efforts, cheers to those of us that color outside the lines sometimes 🙂

I have to say I’m quite surprised because I’ve been sitting at this plateau for several months since giving birth and I was at this same plateau before I got pregnant. So this is encouraging. I’m hoping to see the scale continue to dip back to where I feel comfortable and hit my goals.  Fizz drink for breakfast. Avocado and a little bit of left over turkey meatloaf for lunch. Made non breaded orange chicken for dinner, it turned out terrible ha!! But we choked it down. Cheated and had a beer and a whiskey cocktail too, will-power clearly not my strong suit. Detox tea before bed.

Day 5- Burnt hair drink. Cheated at lunch and had an amazing margherita pizza. I swear I’m giving this thing a good effort, even if I use the word cheat every day ugh. Good thing was that I’m noticing that I get really full after just a few bites of food these days so even if I’m cheating (which I am honestly trying not to do) it’s not like I’m gorging myself. Other bonus, since it was so heavy compared to what we’ve been eating I was too full to even consider eating dinner. I think I had about 3 bites of left over vegetable soup and some tea.

Day 6- Getting into a groove with things. I really would rather eat no breakfast and have a decent lunch than waste calories on both. This also means that I’m not doing shakes for lunch, I want actual food and I can do that for even less calories. So I’ve been skipping the shakes, the only time I’ll do a shake is if I’m still hungry after eating a little bit and I make half a serving size. Had some left over steak and asparagus for lunch. Dinner was a deconstructed burrito bowl with cauliflower rice, avocado, ground beef, etc. Detox teas before bed each night. This is kind of nice, I get my tea and read before bed, both of these things are new to me and I feel like I’m making a lot of personal progress outside of just food.

 

Day 7- Made it a week. Stepped on the scale again and I’ve lost ANOTHER 2 pounds since Day 4!! I mean this is tremendous! I honestly equate this break in the plateau to giving up/cutting way back on alcohol. I’m not a glass of wine a night kinda girl, I’m a beer a night girl. Sometimes 2. Or even 3 if it’s the weekend and I’m up later. It’s a lot of empty calories for sure. So for now I’m going to equate this pretty large weight loss (comparatively) with giving up those extra calories. It’s a win win either way!

Down just over 4 pounds in a week, I’ll take it. It’s honestly much better than I expected.
To see the recipes we made for dinners this week head over here.

You can read more of my overall review here

Ready to try it yourself, go here

Week 2 is over here