Day 4: A day of rest...or two

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I took the day off. Yep, called in sick. And I'm doing what you're supposed to do on days like this, sitting on my rump. It's only about 1:30 in the afternoon as I start this post and, so far, no extremely tired feeling. I'm hoping it was just some sugar/processed foods detox thing and NOT that I'm getting sick.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with maple syrup

**Update - I forgot, no grains for the first 7 days. And the maple syrup was likely a no-no as well. You can imagine how disappointed I am in myself. Wink.

I cooked 1 cup of Bob's extra thick rolled oats and ate maybe 2/3 of it. I added a tablespoon of pure maple syrup. I like things sweet and I wasn't sure the one tablespoon of syrup would do the trick but it was good. Could the lack of refined sugars be resetting my taste-buds already?

If I am able to pull off this no refined sugar for 28 days thing, I bet my taste-buds will change. Neat, I hadn't thought of that. Of course, I could always change them right back with a few bags of m&m's. Anyway, I sat around all morning, resting and catching up on articles and a few bad TV shows before lunch.

Lunch: Kitchen sink soup - chicken, rice, zucchini, sweet potato, avocado

I know, weird combo, right? And it was a bit different, but not bad. I put the rice in and then remembered the sweet potato. I would have skipped the rice if I remembered earlier because I didn't need two starchy ingredients in my soup.

So, a few words on how it's going. To know how it's going I need to remember my purpose for doing this, which is two-fold.

1. Raise my awareness of what I'm eating while breaking bad eating habits. I'm hitting it out of the park on this one! I've been logging all my food here and on the challenge website and, aside from a few plantain chips the first couple of nights, I've been very happy with my choices. Oh sure, I've gone "off plan" a few times here and there - with things like quinoa and black beans - but a) those are damn healthy foods overall and b) it's not enough to defeat the purpose. I've fought off "bad" cravings for things like a McDonald's ice cream, candy, pretzels (ok, pretzels are not so "bad" but they are highly processed so there), etc.
2. Check out the gluten free thing. So far, no good information on this as yet. This is only the 4th day and I'm also giving up refined sugars and dairy so it's hard to know what's what in this arena. I guess I'll only really know when I start to add things back in at some future point. 

As far as exercise for today, I'd planned to finally take an indoor computerized bike class, RST (race specific training) tonight with TriMore fitness. This is the one where you bring your own bike. I've heard so much about how awesome they are and each time I make plans to go, something comes up. As long as I didn't start feeling super-tired this afternoon, I planned to go.

And then I got tired. I took a nap from 3 - 4:30pm and woke up tired. That's it, I decided not to drag myself to the class. I could see myself lifting weights but cardio just felt out of the question. I took my temperature, 99.5 degrees. Not too bad but between that and the exhaustion I decided to take tomorrow off work too. I'm willing to rest if it means staving off some even worse illness. I'm going to call my doc's office in the morning too and see if I can get in. You know what I'm afraid of.

Dinner: Chicken & rice soup and a slice of ham.

Evening snack: Banana, orange.

I'm not drinking enough water. As in not nearly enough. In fact, let me get some now. I'm sure more water would help my overall situation. Ok, that's it from me. It's 9:40pm and I'm off to read and then sleep.

ps - still resisting temptation. Today it was for 1: fried chicken and 2: carrot cake. I drove right on by the fried chicken place and closed the fridge (at my mom's house) as soon as I spotted the carrot cake.