After the challenge

When the 24 day challenge was over, I was actually afraid of going back to my old way of eating. I wanted to keep eating the way I had learned to, and I think that's the point. I scoured the Advocare website for advice, and they recommended the 80/20 rule. Then I had to Google what that meant. The idea is that you eat healthy 80% of the time, and give yourself a break or indulgence 20% of the time. This way you don't feel deprived and desperate for sweets all the time, but most of the time you are eating right. So if you eat 3 meals a day, that's 21 meals per week, so 4 of those meals can be whatever you want and the rest are healthy.

With that in mind, my first 4 meals of the week were indulgences, and the next day I decided that a new week was starting...haha, that's not really what happened, but it was kind of like that. I'm just not organized enough to keep track of it that way. Plus, I'm like a shark smelling blood when I eat sweets! I can refrain just fine if I haven't indulged in a while, but one taste wakes the beast inside and I must eat all of the sugar on the planet. For me, that's what food addiction is all about. There is this feeling of zero self control that eats away at me. If it's an option, I will eat it all!

So, I did my best to stick to the challenge rules, and it went ok for 2 or 3 weeks. Halloween happened, and let's just say there was a shark attack. I tried to recover and keep eating healthy, but I started feeling so burned out, and by December I had given up completely. 

I realized that Spark had been giving me energy and will power, but my body was used to it so it no longer had the full effect. I tried to only drink it on days I felt like I needed an extra kick of energy. It was working so poorly by Christmas time, that I didn't even bother. By December 31 I had gained back half of what I lost on the challenge, putting me back to 265lbs. I spent that night brainstorming a new plan.