Barre 3 28 to Great Challenge: The Final Update

I've been meaning to give the final update to my 28 to Great Barre 3 Challenge for a few weeks now but I am just now getting around to it.  Well, I did it!  I made it through 28 days of no processed foods (except Diet Dr. Pepper) and 6 days a week of barre workouts.  As I said in the beginning, I am not good at sticking to stuff so I was a little impressed, if I do say so myself, that I made it until the very end.  Here are my random thoughts on the whole thing:

• It was hard.  For me, it was a total 180 from the way I was used to eating so of course, the food part of the deal was the toughest.
• While I really do love the online class option, and will still do them from time to time, I am much more in love with the local class that I can go to with friends.  The girls in my class are all so funny and hearing a mid-plie complaint from someone always makes me laugh.  Knowing that someone I know and love is suffering along right next to me somehow makes it so much more bearable.  I did stick to the workouts though and did a class at least 6 days a week.  I snuck a few of the workouts in LATE at night but I did it.  My plan going forward is to try to do 3-4 barre workouts per week.
• The food I missed the most was pizza.  I thought it would be something sweet and sugary (like my beloved sour gummy worms) but it was definitely pizza.  While there are plenty of whole food pizza recipes, I had also given up cheese so pizza wasn't an option.  I did not realize how much I love cheese.  I had pizza 3 times the week after my challenge was over.
• Starting today, I plan to return to a "mostly" whole foods diet even though the challenge is over .  A few days after my challenge ended, I had a three to four day stretch during which I ate horribly.  I'm talking gummy worms, greasy fries, fried mushrooms, fried pickles and queso (not together.)  I was miserable.  My stomach could not take it.  I had terrible headaches and was so tired.  I realized right away that I felt MUCH better when I was eating clean.  While I won't be as hard core, I am going to try to go back to a 28 days way of eating for the most part. 
• I'm still not happy about how expensive it is to eat healthy.
• It's also so inconvenient to eat healthy so I have to be really organized about it and that's hard.  You definitely have to be prepared and eating out is not really an option if you want to eat clean so I am definitely going to have to start planning ahead.  Snacking is the hardest part.  I definitely had to be prepared by cutting up fruits and veggies and by always having healthy options ready to grab.  Hard work!
• I did lose weight.  I was pretty surprised at the weight loss because it's not like I was counting calories or doing intense cardio.  I will say that I've already gained about 3 pounds back in the few weeks that I've been off the clean diet.  This just proves that eating clean works. 
• I still never drink water.  I may need to do a 28 Day H2O Challenge.  I CANNOT seem to get in the habit.
• Speaking of another challenge, I really did find myself determined to stick to this because it had rules and because I felt like I had accountability since I was updating on the blog along the way.  It made me think that I should do this more often with other areas of my life.  I was thinking about a 28 Day Morning Quiet Time challenge because waking up early is so hard for me to do.  I also thought about a 28 Day Organizing challenge with set areas lined up in advance because as many times as I say I need to clean this closet or that drawer, I always seem to put it off.  I am seriously considering at some point a 28 Day Spending Freeze but that one is pretty terrifying.  I'm not a big shopper but I still think it would be so hard to not purchase any items that weren't absolutely necessary for 28 days. 

So that's it.  I did it!  I will do it again at some point.  It was a CHALLENGE for sure but worth it.

© 2013 paperdoll designs Please don't be shy!! I'd love to hear your comments!