The Clean Program: Year 3, Day 1

Terrible handwriting, but yummy menu

Note: Decided to switch up the Clean Program posts a bit. I'm going (to try) to post daily to break up the posts so they're easier to read. 

I'm hurting friends. Good lord. We did a beach cleanup on Saturday with the Volusia Surfrider chapter in Ormond Beach and who knew that one hour of picking up trash could be such a full body work out. My back, legs, arms, shoulders and entire being aches!! Maybe I should include exercise in my "getting healthy" plan. To make this all worse, I cannot turn to coffee or ibuprofen for a boost to get me through the pain. Instead, I have a walnut/almond milk/raspberry/cocoa powder smoothie! I thought it might be hard to drink with no sweetener and it was really good. This gives me hope!! I can't get too cocky just yet though: I had a delicious Easter brunch and tons of goodies (read: chips, candy, soda) yesterday, so it could just be that the withdrawals haven't kicked in yet.

Today's Menu:

Breakfast: Raspberry/walnut/unsweetened almond milk/cocoa powder smoothie

Snacks: Apple, carrots, lemon water **Update 3:30 pm: Ate all my snacks and I'm starving!! Need more snacks tomorrow**

Lunch: Broccoli/Chickpea/Brown rice with Tahini/Garlic/Lemon sauce (love this stuff.....good thing too because it's lunch allllll week)

Dinner: Asparagus and Leek Soup...I messed it up but it still tasted pretty good :) We also split an avocado straight out of the skin with a lil sea salt on there. We were both really hungry and figured it was better than scarfing a pan of brownies from Publix (well I figured that, Ryan would have probably just suffered through).

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Enjoying my last cup of coffee

Almost....gone...noooo

I feel a little sad, savoring my last cup of coffee at work before we start the cleanse on Monday. I also had to turn down lunch out with my co-workers...this was practice for when I really can't eat out April 1-21. Well, I could eat out but I'd have to order such a boring lunch that it would ruin the fun. I'm being very melodramatic about all of this, it's really not that bad....see?? You should totally do it with us!!

Army Duck wants you to eat the jelly beans

Things that will be super hard for me this year: ice cream, candy, soda, SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR........it's a sickness. A friend of mine (click the link to her FB page, she is super positive and her posts inspire me) recently gave up all non-naturally occurring sugars and artificial sweeteners and while I couldn't commit to it when she did, I'm pretty much forced into it during the Clean Program. The first year we did the cleanse, we could use agave syrup and I did...a LOT. This year, we can have Stevia (BARF, will not eat, I hate it), Coconut Nectar (never tried, going to look for it this weekend), Yacon (WTH is YACON?!), Whole Fresh Fruit (my biggest craving fixer...it takes forever to eat an apple or spoon out a kiwi and usually does the trick), dried fruit (sparingly) and monkfruit (again WTH). I already know of a few recipes (chocolate chip cookies) that will help me avoid Little Debbies and Starburst jelly beans (conveniently located next to Reginald the cactus on my desk), I need to look into a few others and make sure I have an arsenal of Clean snacks to keep me on the straight and narrow. Have you found any amazing Clean-friendly recipes? Share them in the comments!

Nicaragua, here we come!!

From our last journey to Central America (Tela, Honduras)

Well, here we come....in 6 months :) The plane tickets for Ryan and Brandy's 4th Wedding Anniversary Trip have just been booked! With this purchase comes a challenge: living out of two small backpacks from Sunday-Sunday. If you have flown Spirit Airlines, you may know how this challenge came about. Spirit, while being about $200 less than the next cheapest flight from another airline, also charges for both carry on and checked luggage! Boo! I decided to spend the luggage money on trip insurance since we're booking so far in advance of our trip. I think it's money well spent for peace of mind for the next 6 months but I'm sure there are plenty of people who would rather have the extra luggage. The way I see it, it's less stuff to lug around....especially since our preferred mode of transportation will be hoofing it and public transport. When we went to Honduras, I over packed because I wanted to be prepared for anything that could happen. Turns out, even with our massive bags, we didn't have baby oil for the no-see-ums that are just awful in Utila and something we had no way of knowing about before we left (We didn't even know we'd be going to Utila before we left). What I learned from Honduras is that you can be prepared but packing everything but the kitchen sink isn't necessary. Clothes, toiletries, 2 beach towels and some comfy shoes. That should do it. Oh, and maybe one of those light sleeping bag things...that would have been nice in the San Pedro Sula airport when we spent 13 hours there. This time around, our flight doesn't leave Managua until around 1:00 am, so we should have plenty of exploring time during the day that we don't get to the airport quite so early. I'm also going to make sure someone will actually be at the ticket counter to check us in when we arrive. I wonder if they stop letting people into the airport at a certain time? I have some research to do!

Have you been to Nicaragua? What are your recommendations? All we know for sure is this: We want to hike a volcano, Ryan wants to do some surfing (he's a little leery of renting a surfboard but for our trip, it just makes more sense this time) and we want to be around actual Nicaraguans. This is our favorite part of traveling abroad. We want to feel like we have actually left the US! No resorts, no air conditioning (unless that's part of the general experience), and NO CHAIN RESTAURANTS. I'm sad to say that we have broken all of these rules but it's something to strive for ;)

3rd Annual Clean Program Cleanse Starts in April

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Here we go again! Our annual 21 day journey into the world of "The Clean Program". Usually we do the cleanse during January but with the move and everything, we decided to postpone this year's cleanse until April (after St. Patty's Day and Easter...duh!). I'm actually looking forward to it this year. I have officially been brainwashed...must be the toxins ;) For a totally inappropriate view of cleanses, read this hilarious yet offensive article at Cracked.

If you'd like to take the 21 Day Challenge with us, you can view our experiences for the past 2 years of the cleanse here.  After you see that, you might change your mind...but maybe not and we'd love to have the company :) It's hard being the only ones not at McDonald's or drinking a glass of wine or, God help me, COFFEE. Usually we would attempt the elimination diet before we start the cleanse but we are having house guests for Easter and I am waaay too excited to make delicious (not Clean friendly) recipes for it. So, sorry body...you're in for a shock. After this next week of cleaning out all non-Clean items (Chocolate Cherish Passion ice cream, your time is up) by putting them directly into my face, it's going to be a rude awakening April 1 when I go cold turkey from caffeine, fried foods and all the other junk I somehow forget makes me feel terrible. I need the yearly reminder that real, whole food = no tummy aches and general sense of well being and crap food that Brandy likes = mega aches in the tum tum and that "I can't get off the couch" feeling.

Let's do this!!

New Smyrna Beach

Well, we did it: We moved to New Smyrna Beach and became homeowners for the first time! Woohoo! The past few weeks have been a blur of cleaning, organizing, and getting things ready for a massive yard sale (occurring this weekend). With all of this commotion, we haven't had too much time for adventuring but we have ventured out to a few of the restaurants in the area and a few bike rides around town. That's all for now, but I hope to log some adventures in the very near future :)