I see you all you little clean eaters, with your meal prep, tasty recipes, and pretty smoothies, I LOVE IT. I’ve been inspired by it. I said to myself, olde broad get your diet together, one cannot live by popcorn and milk duds alone so I did it.

Prepping wasn’t hard I’ve always done that. I chop every Sunday for salads, cooked meals and juices for the week. So I continued to do so. Getting junk out of my cabinets and fridge was easy as well, I ate it ALL. I work hard for the money I ain’t ’bout to throw out some perfectly good Tostitos. Having polished that off I was on my way.

Week 1 – my head was hurting, I was having junk withdrawal, and was  HOOONNNGGRRRYYY and evil without my snacks but I persevered.
Week 2 – I weighed in and was back to where I was at the start of the summer.
Week 3 – 2 more pounds. Shouldn’t this be faster? Oh yeah I’m old and my schedule was getting crazy so the workouts slowed down.
Weeks 4-5 I’m bored and tired of eating like this. I stop weighing in.
Week 6 – I turned 49 ate ALL the things and have been eating ever since.

In that 6 weeks, the net loss was three pounds. Needless to say with that amount of sacrifice I was sorely disappointed. So much so that I haven’t tried again since. However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Not a day during that time did I have digestive issues. I stopped rolling like a hot dog roller all night and slept well for the first time in foreverrrrrrr, and did not have a headache after that first week. Yet I titled this Eat Clean For What?

In spite of my perceived failure I was on to something. The focus on eating real food affected my quality of life in a positive way and that is very important as you get older. In fact eating whole unprocessed foods can:

• Give you more energy
• Improve cardiovascular health
• Prevent cancer
• Support mental health
  And…
• Lose weight

Losing weight is really the cherry on top of that clean smoothie. I think those benefits plus those I’d experienced during my first attempt are well worth going for it again and I will, as soon as I finish this last bag of Lays.