After my third baby, I was REALLY struggling to get my weight down. I hit a weight plateau, which is when your body adapts to the way you are eating/exercising and decides it’s comfortable there. I was working out at the gym and eating OK, when the scale stopped going down. I needed to do something different so I put in a TON of research on what portions of which foods I should be eating. I came across an article about the 21 Day Fix nutrition plan, and I couldn’t stop reading everything I could about it! This plan follows everything I have been taught in my college health and nutrition classes, as well as my personal religious beliefs on nutrition. Essentially, it is a nutrition plan that includes:
*NO CALORIE COUNTING because it includes measuring containers instead! Each are different size and color to match the food type you are eating. For example, the yellow container only holds 1/2 cup and is to portion control your carbs.
*A list of foods you can eat. You fill your containers with picks from this list-there is a big selection of whole foods!
*They have a simple graph that plainly shows which bracket you fall under based on your weight. This tells you how many containers of each color you can have per day. For example, I fall into the first bracket which lets me have 3 green containers full of veggies (so I choose veggies from the food list. Whatever I can fit into 3 green containers are the vegetables I get in the day). I also get 4 red containers (proteins), 2 purple (fruit), 2 yellow (carbs), 2 teaspoons (peanut butter, olive or coconut oil), 1 blue (cheese, avacodo, or nuts), and 1 orange (dressings, olives, seeds). Do you need these actual containers? Um no. You don’t. You can use regular measuring cups! Green=1 cup-Red=2/3 cup-Purple=1 cup, Yellow=1/2 cup, tsp=tsp, Blue=1/4 cup, Orange=2 Tablespoons
*Recipes come in the nutrition booklet so you can make approved dressings. You can also take a look at the ”freebies” you can have whenever and however much you want, like cinnamon and mustard. No added salt is allowed on 21 Day fix.
Once I figured out all I could, I started following the nutrition plan but with my own workouts at the gym. The result was 3 lbs lost in 2 weeks which was great for me! Last week I decided to try the 21 day fix workouts and I really loved it! They have been one of my favorite beachbody workouts so far. InsanityMax30 is awesome, but I’m jumping around like a crazy lady so much that I’m worried I might hurt one of my cuties when they are around so that makes it more stressful. 21 day fix workouts are totally intense, but not insane 🙂 I also love that they are only 30 minutes long! InsanityMax30 is also only 30 min long, PLUS no equipment required which, to me, makes that program one of the greatest, but I love the 21 day fix workouts so much that I was willing to go buy a couple weights.
I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend 21 day fix to anyone who wants to get correct portions of the whole foods they need. The 21 day fix nutrition plan isn’t a diet…it’s a training tool to teach you how to control your eating habits so pretty soon you don’t even need the containers, you hit your goal weight, and can work on maintaining your healthy body through life. Other programs that I recommend are low-glycemic eating plans and weight watchers, but in my opinion 21 day fix is the best choice because it is all whole, unprocessed food and conveniently measurable, which makes it EASY PEASY to measure out a weeks worth of meals in one day after a few hours of food prep. There are a lot of great youtube videos of people showing how they meal prep their week, or you can also google “Meal prep Monday beachbody” to get access to tons more info so you don’t have to cook and dishes every day of the week.
Even if you are unable to exercise due to injury or health issues, you can still do the nutrition plan for a healthier body.
BONUS! There is a 21 day fix app (free!) that provides the calculation of your bracket and an easy way to track your containers each day! I have stayed on top of my eating plan way better when I know what I have eaten and what containers I have left in the day. Make sure you don’t skip out on any of your containers, and drink LOTS of water! You do NOT have to purchase shakeology to get great results! There are links below to the official 21 day fix package and also a much cheaper option of the same nutrition plan without any workout DVD’s.