Sunday, January 2, 2011

28 Day Action Challenge - Prep Day - Check out my Kitchen

 Tomorrow starts the 28 Day Action Challenge put on by Whole Living Magazine. Today is a freebie prep day before beginning the challenge. Since week one is about gentle detoxing through food choices, it's a good time to check out your kitchen to get ready for the challenge and shop for ingredients for the recipes. There is a nice listing of ingredients on the challenge website to take to the store with you.

Today I am also going to check out the dos and don't of detoxing and other pre-challenge information. Recipes for the week can be found on the website or in the January/February issue of Whole Living Magazine.

There is a list of foods to avoid during the challenge which may prove difficult, but I'm determined. I love, love, love, my first cup of coffee in the morning. I used to weight it down with about 1/4 cup Coffee Mate mocha mix until it dawned on me that each tablespoon has 35 calories! That's when I started putting the one tbs of coffee mate and the rest was 2% milk and stevia for sweetening.

The challenge also says to drink 8 glasses of water every day and for me, that's difficult too. I drink my green smoothie and green tea already and drinking 8 glasses of water would leave me running to the bathroom even more than I do now-lol. I did manage to drink 5 glasses yesterday though.

I read recently that those who start their day with a glass of water eat less calories through the day than those who don't so that's a pretty good reason to get your first glass of water when you wake up in the morning.

Around New Years every year, I try and check for outdated food, get rid if processed and packaged foods (part of the 28 day challenge) organize cooking ingredients and generally make preparing meals and snacks easier for the coming month or so.

We updated our kitchen a couple of years ago and I found packages of things that were 2 years out of date hanging around, taking up space! Now I try and at least rotate ingredients and search my cabinets before going shopping to avoid buying things I already have on hand.

I see Green Smoothies are on the list of detox foods this week. I bought my Vitamix about 7 months ago and love it! We've been drinking green smoothies daily for that time and feel much healthier for getting our daily fruits and veggies. I figured over the holidays that even if we were eating fudge and cookies, at least we were also getting our greens!


Check out what Vitamix has to say about adding raw foods to your diet. If you decide to order, through this link you can get free shipping.

So, today is cleaning out cabinets and shopping for ingredients and tomorrow starts the 28 day Action Challenge

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