7 Day Diet Cleanse

After Thanksgiving, Damon and I were talking about how we really need to lose weight, so I turned to Pinterest.  As a rule, I only pin things I think I can actually do.  I pinned a 7 day diet and cleanse, only after Damon said he would do it with me.  I know me, and there is no way I’m eating a plate of vegetables while that man is eating hot wings.  I don’t have that kind of will power.  I’m going to write (with permission) about our experiences and meals on a diet called The Eat Your Heart Out Diet.  The website has TONS of helpful information and tips!!! She also lovingly calls it the Satan Diet, and I get why. I contemplated titling this post 7 Days in Hell, but I thought that would scare you away.  It’s hard, but doable.  It says you can lose 10+ pounds in 7 days. It’s also a great cleanse of your system!

Below is my review of sorts. I’ll detail our results, the plan, the meals we ate, and recipes.  I figured others might want ideas for meals and how to prepare them (if you’re looking for more information on the diet and why it works, go to the link above).  I’d also like to thank Pinterest.

Our results: I lost 7 pounds and Damon lost 11 (weights taken on the morning of Day 8).  I kept mine off and only gained a total of 2 pounds back when I weighed myself after Christmas (and I didn’t curtail my holiday eating)!  Damon gained a few back, too.  A pound a day isn’t bad at all! I didn’t drink nearly as much water as I should have, and I think my results would have been better if I had! The best advice I can give? FOLLOW THE PLAN! Why do the diet if you’re going to cheat or not follow all of it?

Here’s the Plan:

Here is the diet plan courtesy of http://theeatyourheartoutdiet.blogspot.com/

Our Meals:

Day 1: all fruit ALL the time

Fruit all day sounds yummy, although I think this was the hardest day for me.  A couple of people at work commented that they could do that, no problem!  Well, I was hungry only a short time after each copious meal of fruit.  I had fruit medley for breakfast, pear and apple for snacks, fruit medley for lunch, and fruit medley with chile lime salt for dinner.  Damon cut up all the fruit the night before and put it in containers for us for lunch.  We added the kiwi at dinner time.

We ate a variety of fruits and I used Trechas chile/lime powder to spice up my fruit.

Blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, and kiwi halves made up the medley.

I ate pears as a snack on fruit days. The hubby ate cuties and oranges, but I’m not a citrus fan (ew pulp!).

Day 2: Veggie Day with (thank God) a potato

I have to admit something that happened today.  It’s the fruit’s fault.  All that fruit, just goes through a girl’s system, ya know?  So let’s just say my pants were a casualty on Day 2; it’s lucky I work close to home and could run home to change.  Damon didn’t have this trouble…. just me.

Okay, now that I got that off my chest, on to the meals. At the end of fruit day I made the carrot, zucchini, and squash ‘fries’ for Day 2’s lunch.  It was so hard not to eat one, they smelled so good (and I was sick of fruit).  I found the recipe on Pinterest a while back, and what better reason to try it!  These are something I will keep making!    We started the day off with cucumbers and salt for breakfast.  We ate an avocado with the ‘fries’ for our lunch along with the tomato, cucumber, purple onion medley. I was so excited for dinner! Damon is a master griller and he grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and asparagus to go along with our butter (don’t over do it), salt, and pepper baked potato. I went to bed feeling great today!

Cucumbers with salt made a great breakfast on veggie days!

Another yummy treat on veggie day: roasted zucchini ‘fries’.

Roasted carrots and yellow squash.

All those yummy roasted veggies packed up ready for lunch.

Here’s a medley we ate whenever we could eat veggies. It’s also a staple at our house with dinners! Grape tomatoes, cucumber, purple onion seasoned with salt and pepper and tossed in olive oil and a bit of red wine vinaigrette.

We each ate one avocado for lunch on Day 2 (Veggie Day). I added a bit of salt to mine!

Mushroom necklace. Maybe the lack of caffeine is making me delirious.

Damon getting ready to go outside to grill his mushroom and tomato skewers. Ellie thinks she’s getting some. She is not.

These yummy grilled grape tomatoes, mushrooms, and asparagus went nicely with the baked potato.

Baked potato. It made my day (Day 2 that is). Just add butter, salt and pepper!

Day 3: Fruit and Veggies

Today was a great day food-wise. We started the day with kiwi halves for breakfast. There were pears for snacks, cucumber/tomato/onion medley and avocado for lunch, but dinner was the best part. We made spaghetti and homemade sauce with sauteed mushrooms, except the spaghetti was made out of spaghetti sauce! I thought Damon might hate this (he’s not a fan of meals that don’t involve meat), but he said it was something we’d make again! We used Emeril’s recipe for the spaghetti squash, minus the butter. I ate kiwi halves for dessert!

That furry man is all mine. Oh yeah, tomatoes are ingredients for Day 4’s yummy dinner, which was my favorite of the whole diet!

Pan cooking the spaghetti squash ‘noodles’ and the tomato sauce cooking in the background.

We didn’t have time to make homemade spaghetti sauce the way it said to online (simmer for 4 hours? um no.). So we skinned 8 tomatoes, pureed them in the blender, and cooked in a pan with onions, garlic, seasonings, and a bay leaf. Maybe it’s the diet talking, but it was good! P.S. Peeling tomatoes is so much fun. Boil water and drop them in for about a minute until the skin pops. Drop them in an ice water bath, then peel the skin right off!

We sauteed onions for the tomato sauce, then used the same pan to saute mushrooms in a bit of olive oil.

On Day 3 (fruit & veggies) we had a VERY tasty dinner of spaghetti squash, homemade tomato sauce, and sauteed mushrooms. We will be eating this again after the diet, just maybe with chicken breast too.

Day 4: Bananas and Skim Milk

Well, there’s not much to say about this day. I took skim milk in my Nalgene bottle to work (the one with a bite valve) and drank milk like a baby at my desk. I ate bananas off and on at work, peeling them monkey style from the bottom (I think my work friends were amazed at my banana peeling skills). When we ate dinner, we got a little creative (it was a Friday, and oh how I longed to go out to eat). We pretended our bananas and milk were cereal!

Damon cutting up our bananas. Then we added (lactose free) milk! We both ate all eight bananas this day.

Day 4 dinner: banana skim milk ‘cereal’. I think it felt more like a meal this way!

Day 5: Chicken and Tomatoes

For some reason, I don’t have many pictures from today. I think it’s because by the time dinner came, I was so ready for chicken that I gobbled it up without even a thought of snapping a picture. I vow to do better on Day 6! We ate scrambled eggs and tomatoes for breakfast, which was really lunch since I slept until noon. Then we ate grilled chicken with fresh tomato slices sprinkled with salt for dinner.

Breakfast on Day 5 (fowl and tomatoes) consisted of scrambled eggs cooked with chopped tomatoes.

Day 6: Chicken and Veggies

I was glad to get back to a variety of veggies today. We ate cucumbers with salt for breakfast and had an early dinner of grilled chicken and sauteed onions and bell peppers while watching the Cowboy’s game. We had more of it for dinner. I love bell peppers!

We kept the grilled chicken breasts warm in our mini crock pot.

We kept the bell peppers and onions warm in our mini crock pot.

Dinner on Day 6: grilled chicken (seasoned) and yellow and red bell peppers (sauteed in a little olive oil).

Day 7: Miracle Soup

We made the soup the night before and took a little taste! Not too bad! We bought double the recipe since there are two of us, but there was no need for ALL OF THAT. We only made one batch, but Damon threw in an extra packet or two of Lipton’s beefy soup mix. We forgot the green pepper (oops). I like cabbage and I like this soup. However, it made me very gassy and my stomach gurgled (not hungry gurgles) all day long. After copious amounts of soup during the day, I decided I would skip dinner (and not risk having another pants accident). Damon threw out all the soup and proclaimed we were getting Chipotle for dinner. Lots of veggies, a little meat, a little starch.

Damon chopping cabbage. I like cabbage, but it gives me gas!

Here is the Miracle Soup cooking!

Closing Remarks
This diet worked. It was hard, but afterwards I was happy to eat ANYTHING. I think it kicked off eating healthier, at least until the holidays hit. Afterwards I noticed if I do eat sweets or packaged things, they taste really sweet or really salty. It’s like my taste buds weren’t ready for eating back in the real world. There is a 3 day diet floating around Pinterest that I’d like to try and review. Maybe that’ll kick off the weight loss in 2013. My work is doing Biggest Loser, and it would be nice to win!