This week was the hardest yet, despite being the week we were supposed to feel unstoppable. We ended up making an unexpected trip to Arizona and realized that part of what made this so easy was the fact that we had basically no temptations here. Yes, we have a couple places that we enjoy eating at but we were already not eating out as much so the transition to not at all wasn’t as huge. All those delicious places and things we miss so much made the decision to stick with this a tough one. But I am happy to report we did our very best and made good choices everywhere we went. Needless to say D and I were tested and there were many times when I wanted to just tell him that we can start over another time or that we can call it good. Whole 9 is a thing.

Something I knew would be tough was asking the restaurants all the dirty details about how things were cooked, and so we didn’t. We made the best choice possible and removed the big obvious things that were non-compliant but we didn’t ask what kind of oil something was cooked in. It was surprisingly hard to find places to eat and enough variety to not get sick of something eating 2 meals a day out. Every morning we offered to cook breakfast for everyone and made sure we started out good. We ate a lot of fajitas and roasted chicken, but we made it and were still able to enjoy our time. We found a fruit stand and made sure to take advantage of the low prices for produce while we were there. I almost fell over when I saw avocados 6 for 99 cents!

This week which was supposed to be the easiest and best week turned into the most challenging week. While making good choices and finding good food was the hard part I do believe we both felt pretty awesome. I also know we talked to a lot of people about it and I hope that maybe we made some think that they could try it. Additionally, both D and I faced our biggest craving and didn’t budge. I made two cakes while we were there and relied on family to taste it and make sure they were good, and D had to sit next to BB while she enjoyed pizza for dinner. That was huge for me, the idea that we wanted to keep up this challenge and that we saw the benefits of completing the program so much that we chose not to indulge!

How we were supposed to feel… Awesome that’s it.They call it Tiger Blood and apparently you are supposed to just all of the sudden have more energy, feel better, and all the good things they say you should expect.

How we actually felt… Pretty good. We were off our normal routines, we were traveling, we have a 1 1/2 year old that doesn’t sleep, we also had some pretty big stressful things going on. Overall I felt like this way of life and way of eating helped us more than we realized. I think that it made us able to handle all that was thrown at us and it challenged us to stick to something that was incredibly hard! I also noticed that I was able to stay up much later than normal. That was really nice and I know D appreciated it. Usually I am falling asleep on the couch by about 8:00 p.m. and even before we left I noticed I was staying up until 10:00 without any problems and I didn’t feel like I needed a nap!

I have no photos of our food because well to be honest it wasn’t that gorgeous or delicious looking!