Hi there 🙂
My name is Lisa Thompson. I am young at heart, 54 years old. I lost 15.6 pounds with the 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge, and this is my story.
I have been married for 30 years and have 2 grown children. My husband and I own a boat engine repair business. I was blessed to be a stay at home mom, helping to run the business for the last 25 years.
I have been carrying around more weight than I like for many years, making me feel pretty sad and old. My pattern has been to work-out for a while, get stronger, and then stop everything and gain even more weight. I am great at self sabotage!
When I was 21 I injured my knee which required me to have a couple of surgeries to remove torn meniscus, and then had a knee replacement when I was 47 years old. Of course, right when I had that done, I tore meniscus in the other knee! Arthritis and immobility caused me to spiral downward, and this time I was heavier than ever with a higher cholesterol number than I’ve ever seen.
I have a family history of high cholesterol and heart disease and my doctor began to threaten medication. This summer, something clicked and I said “enough is enough!”. I was scared straight!
There are many reasons for my decision to make the leap into Clean Eating territory. First of all, I want to live a long life so that I can continue to enjoy watching my children grow into fabulous adults and see all the great things that I know they’re going to accomplish.
Snuggling grandchildren is something I can’t wait to do! I want to show my kids that taking care of their bodies is important, especially since we have some things stacked against us in our family tree. And right now…. I want to get healthy so that I can have that other knee replacement. I am too young to let my knee keep me from doing all the fun things I like to do!
My friend joined the 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge a couple of years ago and had great success with weight loss and all the benefits that go along with that.
I talked to her about it seriously this summer. She said that she would start from the beginning with me as she herself had gotten a bit off track. I bit the bullet and jumped in with both feet, joining the July, 2019 challenge group. My friend gave me tips on how she did things and was right there with me every step of the way. I also was a part of the Facebook group.
I don’t usually enter into conversations online like that but decided to chime in every now and again. The positive responses from mediators in the CleanFoodCrush group and fellow challengers gave me a boost like I’ve never had before! I found myself voluntarily posting my struggles and successes. I even posted… GASP…. my before pictures!!!
I have learned so much about food during this process. I got a food scale and learned about proper portions. I learned about reading labels, and have become more aware about the ingredients before buying certain things.
Eating real, whole, unprocessed foods is the way to go. I’ve known this all along but for some reason, things feel very different this time. My new thought process is that there are so many external {things} that we can’t avoid getting in and on our bodies, why would I want to willingly put anything in my body that I know is bad for me?
My journey with the 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge
I loved week one! Yes, I had good and bad emotions and effects on my body but the good outweighed the bad! I loved the strictness of it. I loved how it was laid out in black and white. Eat this much of this at this time…. PERIOD!
I wanted and NEEDED to be told exactly what to eat and when! I had so much energy during week one. I slept better, was happier and I even lost 5 lbs!
After that, I tried to do weeks 2,3 and 4 which are much more flexible, but I found that with more choices I was struggling a bit. A lot of people love the weeks 2-4, but for me, I was encouraged when Rachel and her team encouraged me to follow what works for me. I chose to do mostly week 1 with clean, healthy dinners cooked fresh each night.
I have kept up with this practice ever since. Later in the summer, my birthday came along and I ate the pizza! A fun weekend away came along and I drank the wine. But, I didn’t beat myself up about it and I didn’t give up. The next day, I started the morning with my eggs and fruit and got back on that proverbial horse!
I am proud to say that during the 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge, I lost 15.6 lbs. I haven’t taken new measurements yet but am down two clothing sizes.
I love how incredible I feel now! I love that I look better. I love that I can fit into clothes that I haven’t been able to fit in for a long time. I even went back for blood work as a follow up to those SCARY results from earlier in the year and my cholesterol went down 61 POINTS!!!!
My original goal was to lose 20 lbs. That was a conservative number in my mind because I didn’t think I would actually do it. Now that I’m so close to that original goal, I have absolutely no desire to go back to my old ways of self-neglect and poor eating habits!
I am confident that I will get to my dream goal of losing 30 lbs. I feel like I have the tools to actually continue with being conscious of what I put in my body and when/why for life!
The 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge has truly been an amazing gift, and I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to do this for myself and my family.
Thank you CFC and everyone here for showing up and being real and vulnerable. It definitely broke down some walls for me!
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