What happens when this Spring Cleaning Challenge ends and there’s no more point board, no one to be accountable to but yourself, no more end date? Let’s talk about some ways to keep those healthy “habits.”
First of all, identify which item(s) on the point list was the easiest for you. Were you always getting an easy point for a fruit or veggie with each meal? drinking water? 30 min of mobility or exercise each day? 6+ hours of sleep every night? That or those item(s) are your “bread and butter.” Don’t lose them! You’ve kept them up for a month so it’s probably not going to be incredibly hard to keep them going. Sure, there may be the occasional day every once in a while where that doesn’t happen, but since it’s become a habit you just pick it back up the next day! You may not “log a point” for a fruit or veggie every day for one full month the way you just did, but I bet you can do it for 25 out of 30 days of almost every month moving forward. The key is recognizing the value and discipline you’ve gained from this past month and implement it into the future. Let your healthy habits build on one another. You’ve created solid groundwork in these four weeks, don’t just toss them aside because the challenge is over.
How do you attack the food groups (sugar, gluten and dairy) that you’ve eliminated? Focus on your results from eliminating the foods: your body composition changes, your sleep quality, your brain fog, your energy, your skin, your digestion. Are those positive changes worth keeping? I’ll tell you from experience – if you go and have a pizza, beer and top it off with a big ice cream sundae the minute this thing is done, you’re going to feel like complete crap! It might feel pretty close to a hangover. It’s amazing the way you’ll find that your body reacts when you’ve actually eliminated an item that is an irritant. Re-introducing a big, sugary meal will do that to you. If you are gluten and/or dairy sensitive and eliminated one of those items, you may learn how crappy they really make you feel by reintroducing them. So, here are three “real life” ways that you might bring the Spring Cleaning Challenge to an end:
- Be the self aware crash dieter. Bring back all the “goods!” You may have just been in this for the challenge part of it, for a little opportunity for a friendly competition and boasting rights…but now that it’s done, IT’S DONE and you’ll take on the next challenge when it comes. If that’s you, I just suggest to be a self aware crash dieter. Note how you feel the seconds before you dive into that first smorgasbord and note how you feel after. There is a possibility that you may actually find yourself keeping a smidge of the stuff you learned going after a week of reversing the detox. If you don’t notice a difference, just keep the tools you gained in your back pocket in case you reach a crossroads with your fitness, diet, health, etc. in the future and need to change things up.
- Be the scientist. Experiment. Reintroduce eliminated food groups one at a time and in a controlled manner. If you took out dairy, don’t eat a block of cheese. If you removed gluten, don’t inhale a loaf of bread. If you took out sugar, don’t jam down the equivalent a bucket of Halloween candy! Have one or two servings. Be observant. Notice small effects that could happen immediately like phlegm, dry mouth, headache, digestive issues or bloating. Nothing happened? Cool. Move onto the next eliminated food group. Or re-assess in a week of having introduced those items back into your diet.
- Be the new you. You’re ready. You weren’t just in this for the challenge aspect or to experiment. You knew something needed to change and you were ready for it and ready to make it a lifestyle change. You might let the sweets creep in at your aunt’s birthday party, the gluten sneak in with some Wicked Mini Donuts when your family visits and you need to show them what breakfast is all about in York or the dairy sneak in when you go our wine tasting with your best friend and cheese is the classic side snack. However, for you it’s just about the occasional “treat.” You’re not about to go back to cream in your coffee everyday, a bagel for breakfast everyday or a brownie every night after dinner. Take what you’ve learned and continue on the journey because you feel good!
What about those 2 grams of sugar in the pasta sauce, or the 1 gram of sugar in bacon? Those sneaky ingredients are exactly that: SNEAKY. However, now you know! It the grand scheme of things, it’s not that much sugar. But if you find yourself heading back down the track of too much sugar and you know it doesn’t work well for your body, now you know what to look. You’ve learned that eliminating sugar isn’t always as straightforward as cutting out desserts.
Dairy and gluten eaters: if you found that you are sensitive or even have more of an intolerance, just having certain food items once in a while might be okay…or then again it might not be. Some effects can be dealt with, some may not be able to be. So you get bloated, okay you know that and understand you’ll have a gut for a few hours. So you break out, okay a pimple will pop out any day now. So you get gassy, okay you’ll clear a room but if you want to do it in your own house when no one is around – fine. Some of you may find that some rosacea or eczema has cleared. This may not be something you want to deal with any more and just continuing on without diary and/or gluten is worth it. Some of you may have some very annoying digestive issues that have cleared and made life a little easier. These symptoms may be valuable enough to keep certain foods out of your diet. Some of you may have had some chronic acne disappear. This maybe an effect you don’t ever want to go back to. Weigh the benefits that happened for you as an individual and make the decision of how you’d like to proceed.
Bottom line: give yourself credit for a month of trying to improve your health and habits! Spring is officially over as of Friday and your Spring Cleaning Challenge is about to officially be over as of Tuesday night! As mentioned before, everything you’ve learned is a tool. It might be a tool that you continue to use regularly or it may be one that you keep in the tool box just for times when you need it. So, ride out these last few days while being mindful about how you’d like to use these tools and about the things you would and wouldn’t like to continue with as you move out of the challenge.